Former New Jew Governor Jim McGreevy — who resigned from office in 2004 after a homosexual affair — is training to become an Episcopal priest. Take it away, New York Post: "'Gay American' Jim McGreevey is spending his Sunday mornings with a new man — Jesus."
You've got to hand it to the Post for being the first local paper to do its due diligence and cover both sides of last week's Fort Hood massacre. In the kind of story that simultaneously riles up its readers and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of some journalistic basics — akin to quoting the Grinch for fairness in an article about Christmas tree sales — the tabloid today gives ink to a lone Queens man who thinks that Major Nidal Hasan did the right thing when he opened fire inside the Texas base last week, killing 13 and wounding 38. "An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a pre-emptive attack," Yousef al-Khattab wrote on his website, "Revolution Muslim." "Rest assured the slain terrorists at Ft. Hood are in the eternal hellfire."
After last November's fake New York Times treatment, lefty political pranksters The Yes Men are back with a fake "Special Climate Edition" of the New York Post. The front page story, "WE'RE SCREWED," covers, in Bizarro-world Post fashion, the catastrophic events which the scientific community expects humanity to endure due to climate change. You can read it all online here, but the culture jammers have also distributed 1 million copies of the print edition city-wide.
If you were anywhere near the Village this weekend, you probably noticed a sea of doe-eyed teenagers and their parents arriving at NYU and trying to get a quick verdict on if this whole "going to college in New York thing" is all it's cracked to be. Well the New York Post has taken a quick scan of the new course catalog and is quick to give them a heads up—it's bogus! The tabloid finds classes that require students to play Guitar Hero (for "psychological" purposes) and another on exercise and brain chemistry where students take an aerobics class for an hour before sitting down for a lecture. Neuroscience professor Wendy Suzuki explains, "I got the idea at Equinox Gym. I took this kickboxing and dance class that made me feel great. I thought if I could make my students feel like that after my class, I'd be the best teacher in the world!" If that's not enough, the paper digs deeper and finds ?!?!?! (NYU has one of the top-ranked TV and Film studies programs in the nation.) The Post claims that parents were "livid," like one dad who saw the Guitar Hero class, "I just wrote a big check here. I'm not paying for him to study video games. It seems a bit watered down."
Move over, Canada geese. The New York Post has a new public enemy in its sights—the city's 1300 lifeguards. This weekend the paper caught a shot of one of the Parks Department employees in Coney Island off his chair (but seemingly on-duty) coming down to the sand and "canoodling with a lovely." The picture captures his floatation device going unused as his flirtation device works its magic. The most recent indiscretion comes on the heels of a week in which the Post caught lifeguards with iPods on and drinking beer in their tower after hours. Catching the young employees acting so irresponsibly on the job is not just raising the tabloid's ire; they also talk to Chris Bewster, president of the US Lifesaving Association. He says, "It's indicative of very poor management of these beaches...What is extraordinary about the pictures that are coming out of New York is that they do it in front of everybody else. It suggests they don't fear that, if they're observed, they will be disciplined." The rate of swimmers to die on NYC lifeguards' watch hovers around 3x greater than the national average.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco has found herself once again in bed with an abusive monster... adapt her story into a made-for-TV movie.
Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau made it clear today that his office has no plans to let former Giant receiver Plaxico Burress off lightly for the pending gun charges from his November shooting incident. The DA told the Post, "We've always taken the position that he's going to have to go to jail, whether by trial or by plea."
With one retired Corrections official calling Rabbi Levi Glanz's use of detention facility the Tombs as a lavish social club for Orthodox Jewish prisoners as being "systematic" and something "going on for years that everyone knows about," even more accusations are flying about just how over-the-top the atmosphere could get. The Post talks to Corrections officials who tell them about "a TV satellite truck (coming) to the lockup so that a Jewish inmate could watch a relative's wedding on a live feed." The tabloid deems the live two-way hookup to the wedding in Israel "Jew Tube." One official adds, "The rabbi had brought in wine and food and everything ... and they sat in the visiting area for hours. The rank-and-file [guards] were like, 'You gotta be shittiing me.'" Glanz is currently serving a two-week suspension from his chaplain as the Department of Investigation continues to look into the many allegations that have come out in the days since.
The Long Island Rail Road mechanics making upwards of $200K in annual overtime pay at one Queens yard are doing so because of a forty-year-old loophole, according to a new report. Hopefully the well-compensated LIRR workers have used their hefty paychecks for Times subscriptions because they might not like the treatment they're getting from the Post. The tabloid says that the "grease monkeys" are getting paid to "sleep on the job." The jackpot loophole they're referring to is a rule that states that vacant shifts at the Richmond Hills yard must be filled, no matter if any work needs to be done. The Post says this leads to "hundreds of instances last year when mechanics worked 24 to 32 hours straight, racking up time-and-a-half and double-time pay." After those extra-long shifts, the employees then get another eight hours mandatory pay to go home and sleep. The MTA is currently investigating schedule and pension rules. The Richmond Hills rule has been challenged in two previous negotiations by the LIRR, but an arbitrator upheld it both times.
As the debate to legalize gay marriage rages on within the chaotic confines of Albany, two young men took matters into their own hands and hoodwinked their way into a marriage certificate at the City Clerk's Office. Hakim Nelson and Jason Stenson were married on May 26th, sliding under the radar on Nelson's food stamps card, which lists him as a female. No one at the clerk's office raised an eyebrow since Nelson arrived wearing an orange dress with white leggings. The two believe that they made history with Stenson saying, "People in Albany can say, 'Look, it's already happened, so let's just make it legal.'" Hakim Nelson and Jason Stenson, you might be New York's first gay marriage to go public, what are you gonna do now? We're taking our story to the New York Post! The Post talked to a city official, who seemed pretty unfazed, telling the paper, "If someone is trying to willfully sneak through, we try to stop it. But you have instances of females [who] have male names and vice versa. You've heard of a boy named Sue, right?" The newlyweds have been honeymooning at a homeless youth shelter in Brooklyn.
Welcome to the underground, Kevin Bacon. Fresh off of being swindled out of money invested in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, actor Kevin Bacon is apparently now riding the subways and discovering the criminal air down there. The Post reports that Bacon had his Blackberry stolen Thursday at the 7th Avenue and 53rd Street B, D, and E station in Manhattan. Sources tell the paper that Bacon raced after the thief, but "lost track of him as he ran through the station's crowd." The Post seems hard up for details—certainly not made any easier when the NYPD would not confirm the robbery—but the paper makes sure to rally a team of three punsters who really bring home the Bacon reporting that the star was "smoked," "not footloose enough" and "is a lot less than six degrees of separation away from a coveted cache of A-list celebrities and boldface names likely programmed into Bacon's 'Berry." While they can only speculate that the device includes the number of the "boo 'berry" belonging to wife Kyra Sedgwick "possibly along with dozens of other box office stars who have graced the big screen with Bacon," they do confirm that over one-third of subway robberies target mobile devices.
When you're an elected official facing felony charges for assaulting a photographer, breaking his camera and bashing his car in, the best way to proclaim your innocence and garner sympathy from the public might not be to have your lawyer compare your case to another tabloid headline assault of the moment involving a TV star. State Senator Kevin Parker's attorney felt otherwise.
State Senator Kevin Parker was arrested last night outside his parents' home in Flatbush and charged with third degree criminal mischief after allegedly attacking a New York Post photographer. The photographer, William Lopez, claims that Parker flipped out when the senator realized his picture was being taken as he was leaving the house. Parker then came at Lopez and is accused of tearing out his flash and ripping out a panel on Lopez's car door. The photographer says that his finger may also be sprained. The Post was apparently working on a story about the Parker's home being in jeopardy of repossession; the senator is an advocate for foreclosure relief. Parker (no relation) also has a reputation of having a violent temper—in 2005, he was ordered to undergo an anger-management course after he was charged with punching a traffic agent and just last year a female staffer accused him of choking her and breaking her glasses.
Today's New York Post did not take the bait and offer up its whole cover to the swine flu outbreak (though their headline writers did rename it "pig flu," as is their duty). That's because they had to leave some room to promote today's feature on the city's "hottest" college students. The spread is to help promote a new magazine launching called The College Gossip Chronicles, whose publisher says, "We wanted to photograph interesting, hot people that make going to school in New York City so awesome." The Post says that the hot co-eds they discovered turned up some surprises such as "multiple, sultry shots from buttoned-up Catholic university Fordham." And if ogling over a set of barely legals stripped down in their dorm rooms gives you reason to pause, one FIT student photographed assures us, "New York college students are more mature. When you're a student here, you're automatically an adult."
As many families celebrate religious holidays together today, The New York Post has a unique tale of family melodrama as one of their featured stories. Much to the Post commenters' sadistic delight, pets columnist Julia Szabo shares her story of continuing to live with her ex-husband in a 2BR railroad flat for years on account of their six dogs. The couple even continued sleeping in the same bed because as she puts it, "Our dogs are very good in bed, and there were so many of them curled up between us, around our heads and feet (and sometimes on top of one or both of us), that neither he nor I noticed the other's existence." Eventually the animosity between Szabo and her ex grew so great that the two do decide to part, but not before the columnist struggles over what will happen to the dogs. She then brings in an animal psychic to speak to the favorite of her dogs, Angus. Szabo writes, "Angus told me, wordlessly but loud and clear, that although he loves my ex and me equally, protecting John is his duty."
On yesterday's post about the New York Post's "coverage" of Eliot Spitzer's questionable use of the "gremlins" that led him to solicit prostitutes, a commenter asked that the newspaper "get out of Spitzer's pants." Instead, today the Post's controversial cartoonist Sean Delonas has done just the opposite, and given us a bird's eye view the pants of "The Steamroller." Poor Gizmo: first modeled into the Furby, now drawn into the territory of street walkers. The Post also uses Spitzer's return to the spotlight and attempt at contrition as an opportunity to wring his neck over the current state of the state. The paper says that instead of apologizing solely for his prostitution scandal, he should pay some lip service to the fact that "his fundamental failure was in putting Paterson on the ballot." They call out his transgression of "making a play for black votes by placing Paterson just one hooker hook-up from the Executive Mansion. It was an act of political cynicism with ramifications that are only now becoming clear."
For the latter half of Charles Rangel's adult life, he's averaged just about one omission a year when filing his taxes. A private government ethics group reported to the ongoing House investigation on Rangel yesterday disclosed their discovery that Rangel has failed to account for more than $239,000 in assets over the last 30 years. He has listed many assets over the years without disclosing when he acquired them.
On Tuesday, the Post described Governor Paterson's anonymous aide who had leaked rumors about Caroline Kennedy's withdrawal from the Senate consideration as someone who is "about as close to him during the day as his wife is at night." That might not have sat so well with the first lady as yesterday Michelle Paige Paterson sent out an email to friends decrying the downstate papers' "horrid treatment of David." Mrs. Paterson emailed friends telling them that "the new media has gotten out of control" and pleaded with them to write letters to the editor (which, of course, she provided a template for). The Post also notes that the first lady was reprimanded by her employer, EmblemHeath, for sending out the email on her company account (did they tattle on her?!). The Post used news of the email as an opportunity to publish their Pinocchio Paterson Photoshop job for the third day in a row. Not surprisingly, new poll numbers show Paterson's approval numbers are down after the week of flogging he's received in the press.
The ongoing ethics investigation of local Congressman Charles Rangel appears to be going nowhere in a hurry. Today's Post talks to the head of an ethics watchdog group who says, "Four months after the investigations started, there is no investigative subcommittee, no public hearings, and no sign of any progress whatsoever." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had expected members of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct investigating by the end of the session which ended earlier this month. But since that did not happen, the process will only be delayed further now that three of the four members looking into were rotated off with a new session of Congress in place. The Post sounds eager to see the probe take place in swift fashion, possibly because they've played no small role in prompting the investigation to begin with.
In the two years since she has become City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn has used funds from the central budget to provide 14 council members (including herself) with 18 additional staffers. The Post claims that those receiving the extra staff tend to have close ties to Quinn and says that her office would not disclose what the reasoning was behind the bolstered help for certain councilmen. "It's rewarding political loyalty, by and large. It's something I think should be out in the open. It's not the right way to do things," one anonymous council member told the paper (does any griping politician allow themselves to be quoted these days?) A spokesman for Simcha Felder, one Quinn ally on the council who has received two extra staffers justified it by saying, "Simcha's proud to have extra staff members, and he has a large concentration of Holocaust survivors and immigrants. A lot of these people go to this council office for help and wouldn't go to a government office for help."
Today's Post once again blows the lid on what has long been a not so well-kept secret: that the folks around town who sit alongside the jugs labeled UHO (for United Homeless Organization) actually keep that money for themselves while merely paying a $15 a day fee for the jug and a folding table. The Post labels them "glorified beggars" and talks to one who says that the jug is like "giving a homeless person a suit." They also speak to a college student who was irate and told them, "I want my quarter back. That's ridiculous." The paper also reports that UHO does not have the required license to solicit on the street and accuse them of "murky expenses" coming from the nearly $100,000 in contributions the organization reported last year.
Today's Post reports on an Upper East Side cafe that is charging customers $12 a day if they want to plug in their laptops. M. Rohrs' House of Fine Teas and Coffees has signs next to the outlets in the store that say, "Warning: Theft of electrical service is prohibited." Those wanting to plug in can also pay $3 an hour if they're not looking to camp out. The practice has been going on since the beginning of this year, but it sounds like the owner may have been a little testy with the Post when their reporter came by asking if any customers objected to the charge for a charge. "What's to complain about? If you don't want the service, don't take it," Donald Wright said to the paper.
The NY Post is not shying away from tackling large-scale national issues. So following some comments last week from President-elect Obama dissing guys who let their pants ride low, they sent a reporter out onto the streets of New York to see what kind of reaction he'd get while looking like a lost member of the Funky Bunch. The reporter, Justin Rocket Silverman, encountered girls who rejected him, a maitre d' who begrudgingly gave him a table and cops who told him how much they enjoy the gangsta style because it makes chasing perps all the easier as they struggle to keep their waistline up. The Post says that New York is considering a fine against the look that has already been put on the books in Lousiana. Obama doesn't support going that far, but did say, "Brothers should pull up their pants. You're walking by your mother, your grandmother, and your underwear is showing - what's wrong with that?"
That Broadway revival of Equus that's packing them in at the Broadhurst (93% attendance, giddyup!) has been getting a lot of press, much of it focused on Daniel Radcliffe's frenzied nude scene, in which [spoiler?] he runs amok and blinds some horses. Michael Riedel at the Post has dubbed the show's big attraction "Harry Potter's other wand" ha ha, but at least one person is not amused by the quip: Equus's author Peter Shaffer, who tells the columnist, "How very naughty of you. There is a great deal more going on in the play, you know. I'm not writing porn, for God's sake! I was irritated that people talked on and on about it. It was so infantile." He's absolutely right! So let's have no immature comments about these NSFW cell phone photos of Radcliffe's penis taken by an Equus audience member the other night.
Instead of courting New York City voters with a ballot initiative or City Council with legislature to overturn term limits, Mayor Bloomberg first pitched the idea to another group: the owners of the three largest newspapers in New York. In what sounds like a storyline from The West Wing, the NY Times reports that Bloomberg has had private discussions with Rupert Murdoch (NY Post), Mortimer Zuckerman (NY Daily News), and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (NY Times) about their respective newspapers' possible stances on a term limit overhaul. The Times source said that all three owners were open to the idea. "So it would be a clean sweep," the source told the paper. City business leaders like the newspaper owners were the ones who got the ball rolling on talk of finding a way for the mayor to remain in office for another four years.
The NY Post has released the results of its latest sex survey where 79% of those polled admitted to sending flirty and dirty text messages. Other amusing finds: Staten Island comes in as the borough with by far the largest amount of confessed cheaters (67%), Central Park was voted most desirable landmark to make whoopie in, and an overwhelming 84% of those asked said that implants were not sexy. The saddest dose of reality for some will come from learning that over half of those who took the online poll "would not date somebody who lived with their parents."
A sonic device designed to drive off troublesome youths has been installed in one Queens building known for vandalism and drug use. It's called The Mosquito, and is produced by a British company, where more than 3,500 units of the equipment are in use. As humans age, they naturally lose some of their hearing, beginning at the higher end of the audible spectrum detectable to man.
License ID scanners aren't just keeping underage drinkers out of New York bars, they're now assisting police in arresting patrons who become involved in criminal activity both inside and outside of city clubs. The New York Post reports that the electronic scanners which help filter out fake IDs also supply cops with detailed records of every patron who entered a bar or club on any given evening.
Video: New School Protesters Beaten, Arrested (Again)
Restaurant Owner's Email to Staff Belongs in Tyrant Hall of Fame
Murder For A Seat On The D Train
Dude, Huge Cocaine Bust in Williamsburg Right Before the Weekend!
Foot Model Who Married Doorman Sues Co-op Over Harsh Treatment
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