Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Page 1 continues to burnish Christie's image

The construction site of a 222-unit luxury apartment building on State Street in Hackensack. It is the first project to break ground since the city adopted its Downtown Rehabilitation Plan in June 2012. What remains to be seen is whether tenants will patronize restaurants and shops on Main Street, which is pockmarked with vacant and shabby storefronts.


By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

If I didn't know better, I'd think Governor Christie has recruited Editor Marty Gottlieb and his Trenton reporters as spin doctors in his bid for a second term and eventually the White House.

For the second day in a row, a Page 1 story in The Record explores the GOP bully's politics -- this time during the government shutdown sparked by Tea Party crackpots opposed to federal health-care reform.

By slapping "ANALYSIS" on the piece, Staff Writer John Reitmeyer basically can regurgitate the Christie line while abandoning every journalist's natural skepticism or what is known colloquially as the bullshit filter.

Selling out

Reitmeyer keeps a straight face and ignores Christie's veto-filled first term when he describes the mean-spirited governor as "the bipartisan outsider tough enough to knock some sense into a similarly dysfunctional Trenton and ... into national politics as well."

Reitmeyer and fellow staffers Charles Stile and Melissa Hayes should cringe every time they write another fiction-filled piece about the worst New Jersey governor ever, a politician who has declared war on the middle class.

But I guess these three sell-outs want to be on Gottlieb's front page as  much as possible, with one eye on a job in Christie's next administration.

Has anyone figured out how much the wealthy Borg family and other members of the moneyed elite are saving on income taxes thanks to Christie's repeated veto of a surcharge on millionaires?

Wasted space

What's the point of the front-page Mike Kelly column on the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983? 

Bill Harrison, the 20-year-old lance corporal from Dumont shown in then-and-now photos on the front page today, wasn't even in the barracks, and his only injury was a sore ass (A-1).

The sheepish, shit-eating grin in Kelly's photo is his way of saying he again got away with pushing around a couple of thousand words, and passing it off as a column.

Shore thing

A day after shore residents bitched and moaned that Christie is allowing their Sandy-ravaged homes to rot, the governor shows up with $57 million in federal funds to help storm victims in Little Ferry and other towns with household expenses (L-1).

Staff Writer Hannan Adely covered the Hackensack City Council meeting on Tuesday night, reporting that a formerly homeless man who returned $850 he found on Main Street was honored by that august body (L-1).

Never mind that James Brady's honest act was reported in great detail on Saturday's front page.

Back to school?

Deputy Assignment Flunky Dan Sforza thought the City Council ceremony was more important than a money feud between city and Hackensack school district officials over a school resource officer (L-2).

For a full report on that controversy, click on the following link to a blog called Hackensack Scoop:

Misguided residents fire at City Council

Breaking news

Sforza also caught up to last week's closing of the Midtown Bridge between Hackensack and Bogota (L-1).

Much of the rest of Local is filled with police and court news, and news about the police (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

The expanded local obit is about Lawrence Stone, a former Fort Lee resident who led the Stern's department store chain (L-6).

What about an obit on a saleswoman or salesman who toiled for decades in obscurity to provide the service department stores once were known for?

Thai news

In Better Living, the first COFFEE WITH THE CHEF feature is on Kevin Portscher of Village Green Restaurant, a Ridgewood business once co-owned by former Record Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill (BL-2).

Asked t0 name the best local restaurant after his, Portscher picked Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, a Hackensack BYO that has been ignored by The Record in recent years.

"It's just always fresh and it's cheap and it's fast and it's authentic," Portscher said. Amen.  

For a glimpse of how Wondee's pleases both carnivores and vegetarians, click on the following link:

Exploring Wondee's vegetarian menu


Second look

 A concerned reader reports Road Warrior John Cichowski is gulty of RWI (reporting while intoxicated) in his Sunday column on a retired cop with many DWI arrests under his belt: 

"In his Sunday column, the Road Warrior engaged in a sad comedy of errors and illegal statements based on dialogue with a callous, cranky, self-serving, retired cop about Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) cases that deviated from actual N.J. statutes and legal precedents for DWI situations."

To read the full e-mail to management, editors and Cichowski himself, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Making John Cichowski walk a straight line



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