Mere mortals shudder when the NY Post locks its piercing gaze upon them—for like the eye of Sauron, the Post's "wrath blaze[s] like a sudden flame." And the Post's favorite targets, other than dreadlocked OWS protesters, are phonies. But they especially hate panhandling phonies—and today, their terrible eye landed upon a woman who they say has falsely claimed to be pregnant for the last 13 months.
Roxanne Machado, 28, has been panhandling on Fifth Avenue for months, claiming she’s “pregnant and alone.” But the Post believes her sympathy story is a ruse: “She’s fake pregnant,” charged Benjamin Haberland, a Web site manager. He told them he witnessed Machado outside Bergdorf Goodman giving “birth” to a bouncing “foam contraption” she used as a baby bump. “It was falling out, sort of peeking out from underneath her sweatshirt. She was oblivious to it falling out. She didn’t seem to care,” he added.
Last week, they say a man put a sign next to Machado and her two dogs reading, “Pregnant with couch pillow for 3 years." Machado claims she was abandoned by her boyfriend three days after they arrived in the city and that she needs money to get herself and her two dogs to her native California. But the Post think she's just a 28-year-old freeloader who has been arrested at least three times for drug possession and intoxication.
Judging by what the Post identifies as her MySpace, Machado is a marijuana enthusiast who describes herself as "just another person trying to stay up when I've made a profession out [of] staying down." It seems the Post stalked Machado for a day, since they say she also panhandles at the dog run in Tompkins Square Park as well as midtown—and afterward, they watched her "return to a rundown apartment building on Marcy Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant." So what's a creepier thought: a sad woman claiming to be pregnant for 13 months, or the NY Post following you home?
