The Cuomos put Christie, Bush and Reagan to shame

The landmark Church on the Green in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

As tributes continue to pour in two days after the death of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, many readers are wondering why such a princely politician is so rare.

The Associated Press story on A-4 of The Record today compares Cuomo to FDR and Adlai Stevenson, claiming "liberals have lost one of their last, best champions."

That seems premature.

But even more troubling is the media's failure to compare Cuomo and his son, Andrew, the current New York governor, to Governor Christie and all of the other mean-spirited politicians whose sole mission seems to be protecting millionaires from higher taxes.

(The caption with today's A-4 story on Mario Cuomo shows "Matilda Cuomo, center," but there are a total of four people in the photo.)

Cuomo v. Christie

Andrew Cuomo, who took the oath for his second term on Thursday just a few hours before his father died, has governed his state far better than Christie has New Jersey.

The younger Cuomo said that since he took office, New York has turned a $10 billion deficit into a $5 billion surplus, expanded health care to cover 1.5 million more people and reversed gridlock and dysfunction in government by getting Republicans and Democrats to work together (Friday's A-4).

Instead of trying to get the two parties to work together, Christie simply vetoes any legislation passed by the Democratic majority, then has lackeys like Columnist Charles Stile portray the GOP bully as a "compromiser."

Friday's front page

Staff Writer Todd South, who is assigned to cover Hackensack, reported and wrote two strong stories, and they appeared on Friday's Page 1.

The centerpiece focused on Alon Millet, a 16-year-old Bergen County Academies student whose research promises to ease world hunger with faster-growing mung beans.

Once he's perfected that, let's hope Alon turns his attention to ending the flatulence caused by eating too many beans.

Todd's second story is on Rutgers University's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, which has developed a program that focuses intensely on health care for combat veterans.

Contrast those two stories with the drivel from The Record's sports, news and transportation columnists that Editor Martin Gottlieb often plays on Page 1.

Eating in a stable

If the restaurant's name doesn't turn you off, then read the lukewarm review of Valley Stables in Oakland in Friday's Better Living tab (BL-12).

Staff Writer Elisa Ung complained about the "wild [G]ulf shrimp" in a pasta dish, reporting "they were rather thin and insipid, not any meatier or flavorful [sic] than your average farmed shrimp ($23)."

Does she expect wild shrimp, which are free of antibiotics and preservatives, to jump off her plate and into her mouth?

Maybe the menu misrepresented the shrimp in the dish. Did she ask the owner or chef? God forbid.

Food coverage

Thankfully, readers starving for intelligent food coverage don't have to rely only on Ung, as shown by an inspirational profile of Chef Vaughn Crenshaw of Hackensack.

Crenshaw, 29, executive chef at Ridgewood's Pearl Restaurant, grew up next to a crack house in Paterson and lived in a car as a teenager. 

Staff Writer Steve Janoski's feature on Crenshaw appeared on Wednesday's Better Living front.

The story continued on BL-3, opposite Coffee with the Chef, in this case, Filomeno Vuocolo of Cenzino in Oakland (which happens to be across the street from Valley Stables, the restaurant reviewed on Friday).

Vuocolo is another chef who offers nothing to the home cook, claiming that to prepare perfect pasta you must avoid using a metal strainer, because "once you use another metal, it changes the taste" (Wednesday's BL-2).

What is it about chefs and pasta? 

In a previous Coffee with Chef,  Adam Weiss of Due in Ridgewood urged home cooks to throw caution to the wind and salt pasta water "like the ocean."

Today's front page

The Record's news coverage focuses mostly on the young -- even though the vast majority of its readers are 50 or older -- a bias some critics have seen in North Jersey Media Group's promotion policies.

Today, Page 1 carries a long story on a couple's battle with an insurer on behalf of their autistic son. 

The story is by Staff Writer Stephanie Akin, whose byline has been scarce in the past few months.

Desperate editors

The Better Living editors were so desperate for food copy today, they ran a story about a restaurant in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, on the same page as two pet columns (BL-4).

Leave it to Christie to slow mass transit, not expand it

Q

NJ Transit adds cars to its trains to handle increased ridership, but many platforms are too short to accommodate them, such as this one in New Brunswick.

If police are going to search commuters' bags, that would worsen an already agonizingly slow commute on weekday afternoons for North Jersey residents who catch buses at the Port Authority's antiquated midtown Manhattan bus terminal, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When it comes to the overburdened mass-transit system, Governor Christie has been consistent, doing everything in his power to kill any attempt to expand it and speed the commute for hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents.

At the same time, he's refused to raise the state gasoline tax (10.5 cents per gallon) -- the second lowest in the nation -- to revitalize the trust fund that pays for road and mass-transit improvements.

Today, The Record reports Christie joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in announcing plans for heightened anti-terrorism measures, including more police at mass-transit hubs (A-6).

On Page 1, Columnist Charles Stile again sounds like he is in Christie's pocket, peddling the ficiton our GOP bully has "bipartisan credentials" to burnish (A-1).

Legislative ignorance

Meanwhile, even the majority Democrats in the New Jersey Legislature are afraid of proposing a higher gasoline tax as the price dips below $3 a gallon.

Staff Writer Christopher Maag should have led his story on a Trenton hearing with the ridiculous remarks of Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver, D-Essex, a woman I have previously admired (A-3).

"...I'm worried about the average family with four kids and two SUVs that spends $140 a week filling up their tanks," Oliver is quoted as saying. "If the gas tax is increased, what's the impact on them?"

Oliver apparently knows nothing about cars, especially how SUVs use more gas and are not considered as safe as smaller vehicles, as well as how they contribute to climate change.

Any family concerned about high fuel costs certainly wouldn't own two of them, and would trade in at least one SUV on a far more fuel-efficient vehicle.

SUV owners also drive more aggressively and speed more than owners of smaller vehicles -- on the parkway and turnpike, they menace slower drivers -- and get away with it because of lax enforcement.

Page 1 today

The Times-like front page today holds little interest for residents of Hackensack and many other towns.

There is municipal news in the paper today as the Local section's assignment editors and reporters finally got to work on Wednesday.

But it's unclear what Staff Writer Todd South does between the Hackensack City Council meetings he has covered.

Just puzzling

The big photo on L-1 today shows a woman staring into her phone as two police officers survey the damage to a demolished Chevrolet Traverse in Ridgewood.

Staffer Tariq Zehawi didn't bother finding out whether the woman was given a summons or what caused the crash, and the Woodland Park newsroom apparently didn't care either.

The drive-by photo is another example of the trivial filler that has been used by the desperate Local editors for years.

Readers would prefer to see the talented photo staffs' enterprise work, even weather photos, than an endless procession of non-fatal crashes and rollovers and photo captions with no information.

Too little, too late

Many weeks after the start of utility work and other construction work on Route 46 in Little Ferry and local streets, what's the point of today's Road Warrior column (L-1)?

The only bit of useful advice from Staff Writer John Cichowski is buried: 

Check the Web sites of PSE&G and municipalities for road and street closures.

A couple of paragraphs would have sufficed.

Second look

The Wednesday food page in Better Living is a far cry from the Wednesday food section Publisher Stephen A. Borg folded not long after he took over.

Now, Wednesday's BL-2 is largely devoted to promoting restaurants and local chefs, such as Adam Weiss of Due, a Ridgewood restaurant that received 3.5 out of 4 stars and a rare Page 1 promo from The Record last week.

In COFFEE WITH THE CHEF, Weiss, who is 37, talks about his love for Twix bars, salting pasta water "like the ocean" and molten chocolate cake.

If the paper's older readers followed his example, they would end up in the hospital.

The Record always provides a pronunciation guide to the name of the pricey restaurant, Due ("do-ay") lest some might think it rhymes with "doo" as in doo doo.

The pasta recipe from clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson on Wednesday's BL-2 includes a half-cup of artery clogging heavy cream and 4 ounces-plus of full-fat blue cheese.

Where do I throw up?