Editors defend Christie's F.U. to Garfield

The editors continue to make excuses for Governor Christie.

Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin is falling all over himself today, trying to make excuses for Governor Christie, who snubbed Garfield residents at a so-called town meeting on Wednesday.

"The last thing" the mother of Malik Williams needs "is the governor of New Jersey inserting himself in an ongoing criminal investigation" of her 19-year-old son's death at the hands of two police officers, claims today's editorial in The Record (A-13).

"Ongoing criminal investigation"? Who is Doblin kidding? Williams was killed nearly five months ago. That's not an "ongoing" investigation; that's no investigation.

Ex-crime buster

As a former federal prosecutor, Christie could have called for a quick resolution of the grand jury probe into the Dec. 10 shooting. 

But the GOP bully was more interested in flimflamming residents by focusing on how much he allegedly has accomplished since he took office.

The day after Christie's appearance in Garfield, Columnist Mike Kelly's rambling piece included  quotes from the governor's staffers -- in what amounted to an elaborate, bureaucratic justification for the fat bastard's snub of residents.

Sacco of woe

Next to the Garfield editorial today are five letters to the editor about state Sen. and North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco, who has had his hands around taxpayers' balls for decades.

Sacco's three public jobs, huge salary and perks are fruits of the corrupt home-rule system of local government -- a system the paper has defended for eons. 

The Sacco story also exposes how little The Record's editors care about readers who are being victimized by him and all the other petty potentates in North Jersey.

Law & Order news

The lead story on Page 1 today reports the arrest of a suspect in the March 6, 2011, love-triangle murder of Robert Cantor, 59, of Teaneck.

The story also is notable for the rare byline of Staff Writer Jean Rimbach.

In an odd bit of language, Rimbach reports the Superior Court judge who set bail for the suspect was "sitting in Bergen County."

Law & Order news dominates head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section today, including an L-1 photo of a non-fatal crash in Hackensack.

Help for the abused

Buried on L-7 is another Hackensack photo, this one showing A-list celebrities, including Sean Hepburn Ferrer, the son of Audrey Hepburn, at the Children's House for abused and neglected children named for the late actress.

The photo caption is full of problems typical of the supervision of error-prone Production Editor Liz Houlton.

The caption says the appearance of Ferrer and actress Natalie Portman mark "the anniversary" of the Children's House, but it opened in 2002 at Hackensack University Medical Center -- another fact the caption omits.

And why did Sykes plaster the photo of a school bus-car accident all over L-1 and bury this photo in the back of the section, especially in view of recent stories about teachers and others who have been charged with sexually abusing children?  

Friday's paper

I couldn't find North Jersey news in any of the major stories on Editor Marty Gottlieb's front page on Friday.

But there was plenty of Law & Order news in Sykes' Local section, including continuing coverage of the trial of suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa (L-5).

Road Warrior John Cichowski again relies on readers' e-mails to help him write his column (L-1).

But the real disgrace is not the slobs who are responsible for all that litter. It's the deteriorating condition of streets and highways -- which emphasize every squeak and rattle in your car.

Dine in tonight 

No reader of Middle Eastern background would be caught dead at Mezza in Westwood (Better Living review, Pages 22 and 23).

The lukewarm appraisal from Staff Writer Elisa Ung devotes more space to the executive chef's glob-trotting resume and photographs than to the origin and taste of food.

The fat bastard keeps on campaigning

In the Fairway Market at Broadway and 74th Street in Manhattan, the New York "attitude" comes at no extra charge.

Governor Christie's so-called town meeting in Garfield -- which dominates Page 1 of The Record today -- was nothing more than a glorified campaign stop.

Have you seen those Christie commercials heralding an alleged New Jersey "comeback" -- despite all the foreclosures, unemployment and eroding wages and benefits?

Are we stuck with him?

The GOP bully sounds like he is already running for a second term.

The only part of "comeback" that rings true is all the "come" from Christie screwing the middle class as he continues to pander to his wealthy supporters.

In Garfield on Wednesday, he ignored town residents, including the mother of Malik Williams, 19, who was killed in a Dec. 10 police shooting, and residents concerned about toxic chemicals seeping into their homes.

Obesity is out of bounds

Today's A-1 photo of Christie is one of the most unflattering I've seen since he took office in January 2010, but The Record and other media are keeping hands off the obesity issue.

Readers don't even know whether the state is doing anything to fight childhood obesity -- as the media bow and scrape before the fat bastard with the big mouth.

"Obesity" has become the new sex, recalling how reporters kept secret the women John F. Kennedy smuggled into the White House. 

Screwing commuters

Editor Marty Gottlieb and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes keep pounding away at the bloated salaries and perks at the Port Authority (A-1).

But the story they haven't told is how the bistate agency favors toll-paying drivers over bus and train commuters, who must stand in the aisles during the morning rush hour.

The PA has resisted for years adding a second bus lane to the Lincoln Tunnel and rolled over and played dead when Christie killed the Hudson River rail tunnels.

The agency's real constituency are the tens of thousands of drivers who are paying through the nose at bridges and tunnels -- supporting all those ridiculously high executive salaries and cost overruns on the new World Trade Center.

Screwing Hackensack

Sykes throws more crumbs at Hackensack readers -- another boring story about the criminal trial of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa (L-3).

The obituary for Charles A. Cafasso of Fairway Market in Fort Lee fails to report that the Cafasso family's market predates the unrelated, New York-based Fairway Market chain (L-5).

And shoppers in the Fort Lee store don't have to weather the New York "attitude" familiar to anyone who shops at the chain's Paramus outpost.

Another tub of lard

I was looking for a correction of Wednesday's Better Living recipe, which called for 8 pounds of artery clogging lard, 4 pounds of mystery pork butt and a cup of teeth-rotting Coca-Cola (BL-2).

But they weren't typos. 

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill has quite a scam going, promoting cookbooks, urging readers to try some of the unhealthiest food on Earth and in the process, enriching herself and her husband, Ted Axelrod, who takes all her recipe photos. 

Anyway, what reader would bother spending all that time and money making pork tacos at home when great ones are available at Rosa Mexicano in Hackensack and Las Maravillas de Tulcingo in Englewood.  

And if you're looking for a break from all the mystery pork Sherrill is pushing, try a fish taco.

Is the fat bastard heading for the exit?

Will Governor Christie be GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's Oliver Hardy in their stand-up campaign to unseat President Barack Obama in November?

Hundreds of thousands of middle-class New Jersey taxpayers are keeping their fingers crossed that Governor Christie will stop hemming and hawing, and join Mitt Romney's losing GOP campaign for the White House.

What a sweet way to get rid of the fat bastard with the big mouth, who has been attacking unions and catering to the wealthy since he took office in January 2010 -- to the delight of The Record and other media.

If Romney asks Christie to run as his vice president, at least readers won't have to endure another column on the subject from Staff Writer Charles Stile (A-1).

Pro bono or boner?

On A-1 and A-6, Staff Writer Colleen Diskin apparently is incorrect in reporting that all of a $2.35 million settlement will be going to three plaintiffs who alleged they were repeatedly molested by a school administrator in Englewood.

That would leave nothing for the lawyers, who usually keep about one-third of any settlement.

Cop cars with meters?

It's bad enough the state police provided an escort for a caravan of super cars racing down to Atlantic City, but now Road Warrior John Cichowski seems to think they should also provide a taxi service to drivers whose cars are demolished in accidents (L-1).

Readers are scratching their heads over what this has to do with the commuting problems Cichowski is supposed to be writing about, just as they were with a previous column on head lice at a train station.

Traffic-light news

With a lull in utility pole news, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes has started a new photo feature on traffic lights (L-2).

The only Hackensack news today is another story on the criminal trial of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa (L-3).

As with many previous accounts, this piece is heavily slanted to put Zisa's defense case in the best possible light.

Hackensack in the dark

Also on L-3, a story reports the approval of a budget and property tax hike for Teaneck residents. A story on the Englewood budget appeared last week.

Because of blanket coverage of the Zisa trial, Hackensack readers are still waiting for word about the city's budget and whether they will face a tax increase. 

Related articles

• Editors really know how to puck the reader
• Ken Zisa's lawyer blows his defense
• Fat president or black president?
• Zisa's defense lawyer has link to The Record

The Mike Kelly robot writes on and on

All the flag waving in The Record obscures the high tolls commuters are paying to make up for cost overruns on the long-delayed World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

What have long-suffering readers of The Record done to deserve three solid days of Mike Kelly, the columnist who long ago ran out of anything meaningful to say?

The hospital robot on the front page today has nothing on Kelly, who mechanically pushes words around in his column on the Local front (L-1), as he has been doing for decades.

His Page 1 column on Monday led the paper, but readers who plowed through all that verbiage weren't rewarded with any insight into the "questionable" shootings of African-Americans Trayvon Martin of Florida and Malik Williams of Garfield.

Doesn't fault media

In fact, Kelly carefully avoids mentioning the real difference between the fatal shootings -- media hysteria that forced authorities to charge the shooter in Florida compared to media indifference to the death of Williams, 19.

In fact, in the days and weeks after the Dec. 10 killing of Williams by two police officers, The Record's editors and Kelly himself failed miserably to challenge the account provided by Prosecutor John Molinelli.

Instead, the editors merely regurgitated press releases, leaving many questions unanswered, and never tried to find witnesses or the owner of the garage where Williams hid after he ran out of the Garfield police station.

Blames 'America'

Kelly also hides his involvement in a fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager -- he wrote a book about the killing of Phillip C. Pannell by a Teaneck officer in the early 1990s, an account that sided with authorities.

In his rambling Monday column, he actually had the nerve to say this about Martin's mother: 

"Sybrina Fulton should not be blamed that America has focused its unwieldy and unpredictable beam of attention on the death of her 17th-year-old son."

"America"? He means the media, but is too cowardly to say so and expose his own incompetence and the laziness of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her assignment-desk flunkies.

Speeding deaths

The death of seven members of a Bronx family in a horrific accident didn't belong on Monday's front page.

Does anybody believe a statement in today's account (A-4) that the woman who was driving the minivan "may have been simply keeping up with traffic"?

The driver, Maria Gonzalez, was speeding in the fast lane at almost 20 mph over the limit. If she had survived, she would have faced vehicular homicide charges. 

Gave up their cars

On Monday's L-1, a large photo shows commuters running to work now that the $12 Lincoln Tunnel toll has forced them to give up their cars.

Commuters are paying higher Hudson River tolls and fares to make up for the cost overruns on the new World Trade Center -- something that wasn't mentioned in all the flag-waving coverage on Sunday and Monday.

Local deaths

Local obituaries rarely appear on A-1, so today's story about the founder of a Polish-American weekly newspaper must be a case of professional courtesy.

We can expect two more local obituaries about the men who caught 30-pound, PCB-bloated striped bass from the Hudson River, should they decide to eat the fish (L-3 photo).

A four-paragraph story about scheduling in the trial of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa (L-3) is all the Hackensack news today.