With Christie in office, we might as well follow H.S. football

A dental and medical building in downtown Closter shares the street with nail, hair and foot-massage salons; several Korean restaurants and a caterer, and a couple of empty storefronts.

More Korean restaurants and businesses can be found in two nearby shopping centers, Closter Commons and Closter Plaza, both of which are badly in need of a makeover.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record is doing his best to distract readers from the Nov. 4 election.

For the fourth day in a row, the focus appears to be on high school football and Ebola, a potential epidemic created by the media (A-1).

One Page 1 headline seems premature:

SAYREVILLE STARTS HEALING PROCESS

With seven high school students facing sex-crimes charges -- "stemming from an act of sexual penetration on one underclassman," The Record reports -- Sayreville's wounds won't be healing anytime soon, especially if the media has anything to do with it (A-4).

Good health news

The front page today also carries some rare positive news about the federal Affordable Care Act, which Governor Christie did his best to derail in New Jersey (A-1).

In fact, with Christie waging war on the middle and working classes, we might as well follow something as inconsequential as high school football.

Readers have given up hope that Gottlieb and The Record will ever realize the mean-spirited Christie is the worst Garden State governor ever.

Against everything

The GOP bully is anti-everything: 

He's against affordable health insurance, expanding mass transit, taxing millionaires, cleaning up the environment, etc., etc., so on and so forth.

Christie seems to spend much of his time lately out of town, raising money for GOP conservatives and stumping for other Republicans.

N.J. and ISIS

Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson explores the New Jersey congressional delegation's stance on ISIS, the militant Islamic group that is trying to take over Iraq and Syria (A-1).

With only three weeks to go before the election, he should be doing a better job contrasting the positions of Roy Choy, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage.

The Tea Party icon is seeking a seventh term of naysaying from the 5th Congressional District.

What kind of reporter is Jackson? A lazy one. 

Why doesn't he or another staffer ask residents of the district -- which includes Fair Lawn, Hackensack and most of Teaneck -- what they think of the job Garrett hasn't done.

Another screw-up

Also on Page 1, the headline on a brief says "$2.7B is pledged to rebuild Gaza."

But when readers turn to the full story on A-6, the amount pledged to Gaza doubles to $5.4 billion.

Here are some other numbers: 

Incompetent Production Editor Liz Houlton gets a six-figure salary to prevent such errors from getting into the paper.

Why not halve her salary?

Fund-raiser report

Today, the front of Local focuses on the charity fund-raiser of the week: Curing diabetes.

But you won't find the paper's food writers checking their blood-sugar levels anytime soon.

They're too busy pushing dessert and other sugary foods as a major source of nutrients. 

The front of Local also carries a photo and story on the installation of a Martin Luther King Jr. statue on the Hackensack campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University (L-1).

On Saturday's Local front, a stand-alone photo of Bergen County's first MLK statue forgot to mention whether the memorial was on the Teaneck or Hackensack campus.