POLITICS: HOLOCAUST RHETORIC

The increasingly hollow Holocaust

	Gestapo expert Tom Delay.

Conservatives' latest bete noire is University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, for referring to 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns." Which is obviously stupid. I don't really favor comparing people to genocidal Nazis unless they are actually, at a bare minimum, committing some kind of genocide.

Luckily, conservatives are here to help uphold that consistent standard. For example, when I used to drive to work every day, I listened to Rush "Feminazi" Limbaugh in the car on a regular basis, and I remember him referring to the "

March 7, 2005 | 1:56 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20050306.php#e111

FOOD: SCIORTINO'S PIZZA

R.I.P.izza

Heard several radio interviews last week with Ed Levine, author of "Pizza: A Slice of Heaven," identifying the best pizzerias in America. His first choice is in Phoenix, Arizona, where I've never been. His favorites in New York include Totonno's and Lombardi's, which I have no excuse for never having been to.

But I know where the best pizza in the whole area was — until a year ago, when the place shut down. It was called Sciortino's, in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. From what I gleaned on the Internet and through e-mailing the interested parties over the last couple years, the local institution closed because the hospital across the street wanted the space, and it couldn't just be moved because the restaurant's prize possession, the source of the magic, namely the coal-burning brick oven, was built right into the building in the 1930s. So Sciortino's is gone.

You had to get the sausage pie. Still family-run in the '80s and '90s when I went there, Sciortino's made its own sausage and meted it out in sweet, savory, succulent dollops on the pizzas. On the best days, the sauce was just a little bit sweet too. Sweet pizza? Yes! Okay, it's true, on one of the less perfect days, the sauce could be too sweet. But on those days when perfection wafted into Perth Amboy, when the pizza was warm, aromatic, and just sweet enough to give you a happy little surprise, it was as lovely as a first kiss.

I have a favorite New York pizzeria of my own — not one of the renowned ones by any means, but the best plain old unadorned corner pizzeria in town. However, I'm going to save that information for the long-planned, never-realized Offoffoff food section. That day will come, probably sooner than we see Sciortino's back in business.

Postscript: A reader and a member of the Sciortino's operation inform me that the family and the great pizza are in a new location in South Amboy. Got to get down there soon.

March 7, 2005 | 1:22 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20050306.php#e110

JOURNALISM: MISPLACED MODIFIERS

Perils of passive voice

As read on NPR one recent morning, the story of the murders in the Chicago-area judge's home was reported something like this:

COPY EDITING 101 - More in this series -

"The mother and husband of a judge were found shot in their home by the judge."

March 7, 2005 | 1:15 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20050306.php#e109