Editors shrug as Christie continues screwing New Jersey

Traffic on Route 4 east in Paramus moving sluggishly toward the George Washington Bridge this morning just before 9, above and below. Most of the vehicles carried only a driver.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie hasn't lost his ability to control what reporters and editors say about him -- at least in The Record of Woodland Park.

Christie is refusing to discuss "his disappointing bid for the White House [and] his controversial endorsement of Donald Trump," The Record's State House Bureau reports on Page 1 today.

"After his brief and tightly controlled appearance in Trenton [on Monday], Christie sets off to campaign with Trump in Ohio and Kentucky," reporter Dustin Racioppi says.

Still, the best Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin can manage in an editorial today falls far short of outrage:

"Not good enough. Not good enough at all" (A-8).

What preceded that is a long paragraph on Christie's "unwillingness to explain, to the people of the state that elected him as a Republican who supported diversity, how he can now support a presidential candidate who would mass-deport 11 million immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the United States, and who was unable to unequivocally denounce the Ku Klux Klan when repeatedly asked to do just that on CNN on Sunday."

Really? What about Christie's bid to bar Syrian refugees from New Jersey and the nation? 

What about his mean-spirited dismissal of the only black New Jersey Supreme Court justice, John E. Wallace Jr.?

That was as racially charged as Christie's recent attacks on President Obama.  

Fatal hit-run

The hit-run death of a 7-year-old West New York girl on Monday as she was walking in a crosswalk with her mother is tragic enough (A-1).

But readers can't help recall how Road Warrior John Cichowski wrote a number of columns demonizing red-light cameras, which reduced crashes, injuries and deaths, and penalized speeders.

On columns about yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, the clueless Cichowski also quoted drivers saying they wanted to run down jaywalkers.

Local news?

Monday was the deadline for candidates to file nominating petitions for the April 19 school election in Hackensack and other towns.

In Hackensack, three vacancies on the nine-member board will be contested, and voters have a chance to vote "yes" or "no" on the district's proposed budget.

The Record covers schools in Englewood, Paterson and many other communities, but largely ignores Hackensack.

Last Wednesday, a story on the Local front called the Englewood district "the worst in Bergen County -- 76th out of 76."

Yet, Superintendent Robert Kravitz didn't address the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic.

And Staff Writer Matthew McGrath apparently didn't know enough about the district to ask what Kravitz is doing to integrate those schools.

Reviewer is obsessed with dessert

Image via Wikipedia

The front page of  The Record today actually contains news -- a story that required some digging on 34 state employees who are collecting gobs of overtime and a rare local story on Page 1 about four Bergen County towns in the same high school district.

The Local section has a story from Englewood on teacher contract talks, the fifth or sixth story from that city this month, depending on whether you include mention of sidewalk repairs on Oct. 15. The paper is continuing its seeming boycott of news from Hackensack, the county seat that was the paper's home for more than 110 years. The last mention: street repairs at mid-month.

In Better Living's centerfold, an Italian restaurant in Fair Lawn gets two and a half stars from reviewer Elisa Ung. That's only a half star more than she awarded a faux-Caribbean chain restaurant in Wayne several weeks ago.

In the review of Davia, Ung reports on a potato-crusted salmon entree and a strip steak, failing to mention whether the former was wild or artificially-colored farmed fish or whether the latter was grass-fed or at least raised without anitbiotics and growth hormones.

Ung spends too much time writing about desserts. Recently, she related she had a "nightmare" about dessert. I guess she doesn't realize that many people are watching their weight or cholesterol and forgo dessert, especially at a restaurant with big portions, like the one she is reviewing today. In fact, she says fewer than half of its customers order dessert, but that doesn't stop her from sampling four of them.

I found the following hilarious. She reports the restaurant is named after the owner's daughter. "Their son, John, wanted no part of the name." That's a good thing, isn't it, but with a name like John, why does that have to be mentioned? Would anyone name an Italian restaurant just John? Wouldn't  people think it's an elaborate bathroom? Maybe John's Trattoria.

On Page 20  of Better Living, the restaurant health inspections appear, but many towns' restaurants are excluded today and, in fact, never appear in the paper. Thirteen towns are listed today out of the more than 90 in The Record's circulation area.

(This post was revised on Saturday, 10/31/09.)