More gloating, this time on the part of the Daily News:

You might want to think twice before you take any sweet-tooth recommendations from the New York Post.

Just Wednesday, the fact-challenged paper crowned a Staten Island bakery named Cake Chef as the best in the city for classic black-and-white cookies.

Too bad the Health Department shut the place down last week for a string of sanitary violations.

The Post crowed that the bakery on Jewett Ave. is “fabulous” and “one of the best in the city,” but inspectors ordered the place shut last Thursday after it racked up 62 violation points.

The place was deemed “conducive to vermin,” there was evidence of mice and workers’ personal cleanliness was rated “inadequate,” according to the report.

On the one hand you have “Hey Ho — You Owe!”. On the other we see “Hey! Ho! Let’s Sue!” Now care to guess which is the Post and which is the Times?

This somehow qualifies as news at the Post? Someone did something horrifically horrible but we won’t say where because it’s just too horrible:

A crude and tasteless Web site that claims 9/11 was “funny” and the victims “deserved what they got” has provoked a storm of criticism.

The site features a series of heartless jokes, cartoons, and vile photos that make light of the disaster.

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch blasted the site as “crude, vulgar, hurtful and unpatriotic.”

“The police officers who sacrificed their lives that day, and every day, do so to ensure the freedom of speech that this Web site insults,” he said.

“America’s greatness lies in the tolerance of crap like this - where those responsible would be summarily executed for this kind of offense in a terrorist country.”

The Webmaster, who identifies himself only as “Henry” and “Hank Tom,” invites people to send him hate mail via e-mail or a message board — and many have obliged.

“You better hope we never meet in real life,” wrote one distressed Web surfer. “What happened to people on 9/11 isn’t anything compared to what I will do to you.”

There was no information on the identity of the ghoul who set up the site.

(The Daily News fills in the details.)

The Post reports that the first openly bisexual person since David Bowie will be representing the Upper East Side in the State Assembly:

An aide to City Comptroller William Thompson became the first openly bisexual member of the state Legislature last night after defeating his Republican opponent in a special election.

Micah Kellner, a Democrat, took 64 percent of the vote to Republican Gregory Camp’s 36.

Kellner, 28, a top aide to Thompson, has also worked for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan).

“We campaigned on the issues and I really think that’s what voters responded to,” Kellner said.

The special election in the 65th Assembly District — which covers the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island — fills a seat held for 33 years by Democrat Pete Grannis, who now heads the state Department of Environmental Conservation. There are currently four openly gay members serving in the Legislature.

We’re still waiting for a statement from Sean Delonas, assuming he knows the difference between gay and bisexual.

New York Post readers find “rap wars” stories strangely satisfying:

The city’s rap wars are on the brink of exploding after a thug performer allegedly beat up a 14-year-old kid for wearing a rival’s shirt — and the boy turned out to be the foe’s son, officials said yesterday.

G-Unit artist Tony Yayo was released on a $5,000 cash bond after being arraigned on charges of assault and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors. Prosecutors said he roughed up the teenager on a Manhattan street for wearing a sweatshirt promoting a rival company.

Yayo, an associate of rap star 50 Cent, vented his rage on the son of Czar Entertainment chief Jimmy “Henchman” Rosemond, who represents rival rapper The Game, cops said.

. . .

The criminal complaint against Yayo, 29, who is nearly twice the teen’s size, said he hit the kid so hard with the back of his ring-studded hand that the boy’s head bounced off a wall.

The youngster told cops that two men with Yayo brandished guns during the assault, after 50 Cent allegedly sicced his crew on the kid.

A source close to Rosemond, 42, said the father, a former gang member, was fuming.

“If he wanted Yayo dead, he’d be dead already,” the source said.

Cops are not convinced the boy was attacked simply for wearing a Czar Entertainment sweatshirt. The source said cops believe Yayo might have known exactly whom he was hitting.

Rosemond’s son is a rap-star wannabe, and has made industry connections through his father.

. . .

[Family lawyer Jeffrey] Lichtman said the teen was on his way to an after-school internship at his father’s West 25th Street office last Tuesday when 50 Cent, whose Violator Records office is across the street, spotted the boy and signaled to some members of his entourage.

Yayo, whose real name is Marvin Bernard, allegedly pushed the youth up against the wall and hit him.

“F - - - Czar Entertainment!” Yayo reportedly yelled.

Lichtman said he had as much contempt for 50 Cent as the man who carried out the attack.

“He was the one that gave the hand signal that started the whole thing,” Lichtman said. “He wasn’t there during the hitting, but [he] . . . started it.”

Upper East Siders scream at the New York Post’s Doug Montero to get a job:

The muscular store worker didn’t mince words when he told me to shoo from outside the Ralph Lauren clothing shop.

“Go stand by the church or I’m going to call the cops,” he threatened as I lowered my panhandling coffee cup.

Bumming on Madison Avenue is a tough business.

It took about an hour before the Ralph Lauren workers at the East 72nd Street store began harassing me.

The first worker, a linebacker-sized maintenance worker, told me to get off the store’s planters because my rear end was disturbing the hedge.

“You should go by the church. You’ll make more money there because people walk by and feel more spiritual,” he said, pointing toward East 71st Street.

“Get a job,” sneered one 60-something lady.

Hey, leave Billy Joel out of your lazy ledes, why doncha:

Here’s a bottle of red that can quench the thirst of Billy Joel — and half of Long Island, to boot.

The world’s biggest wine bottle — weighing in at 1,300 pounds and containing nearly 64 gallons — was unveiled on Wall Street yesterday.

At 6-foot-5, the bottle — which hails from Western Australia — was the centerpiece of a show featuring all things from Down Under and part of a marketing effort dubbed “G’day USA: Australian Week.”

Then again there’s this: “Joel: I’m No AA Advertisement”.

One day after a Post exclusive uncovers evidence of the automatic tip, the Post gets all sanctimoniously third person about it and reveals further infractions:

Here’s a tip for Big Apple eateries — stop fleecing clueless tourists and New Yorkers who know better with illegal gratuities on their checks.

A day after The Post reported that SoHo restaurant Aquagrill tacked the tip on a French-born New Yorker’s check because “foreigners don’t tip,” more steaming customers recounted similar tales of horror.

Jill Davis, 43, is as American as a double Whopper, but that didn’t stop one Hell’s Kitchen pub from “gratting” her — the industry term for slapping a gratuity onto the bill.

Davis stopped at Smith’s Bar for a quick burger this past summer, and was stuck with a 15 percent gratuity on her $10 bill.

“I said, what the hell is this?” she recalled. “[The waiter] said, ‘Well, we have to make up for all of the Europeans that don’t tip.’”

. . .

[Department of Consumer Affairs] rules state that restaurants can only add a 15 percent tip to parties of eight if it’s clearly explained on the menu.

In fact, most restaurants — where it’s routine for parties of six or more to be charged 18 percent gratuity — seemed unaware of the rule.

“I’m going to change [our policy] to what Consumer Affairs says,” said Mitchell Rosen, the manager of City Crab.

Currently, the eatery charges 20 percent gratuity to parties of five or more — but he said those days are over after he read The Post’s article Tuesday.

One Times Square restaurant manager admitted that she’s stuck the tip on some hapless tourists’ table for two.

“I would only do it if I knew for certain that they weren’t from here,” said the proprietress.

“You never know if you’re going to make money,” said Ana Reisner, a bartender at Tracy J’s in Gramercy Park, but doesn’t add gratuities onto parties even if they’re easy marks.

Waitress Beate Keiser, 24, said she’s adept at spotting non-natives. “I’m just trying to pay my rent,” the Union Square Heartland Brewery server said.

“If I see someone who can barely speak English and has maps all over the table, I’ll add the tip.”

Also: for your edification, courtesy the waiter.

The Post nearly sinks to Queens Ledger depths of disgustingness with its headline “E. COLI ‘RUNS’ IN NYC”.

Also of note, Long Islanders who are nonconsumers of any type of news:

Six New York City residents are exhibiting signs of E. coli food poisoning after eating at local Taco Bells, the Department of Health said yesterday.

. . .

The current health scare isn’t just hitting customers in their stomachs — it’s hitting employees in their wallets.

“Basically, a lot of people have been cut; it’s really unfortunate,” said a manager at a Long Island Taco Bell, who asked not to be identified because of a gag order the food chain has put on its workers.

“For example, I have a single mother who has two kids. I had to cut her because I don’t have any hours — and it’s right before Christmas. I just feel Taco Bell is being punished for something they had no control over.”

The source said that employees eat the food, and none has gotten sick so far.

The source said the 40 restaurants on Long Island are down to just a trickle of customers — mostly those who haven’t heard of the E. coli scare. That revenue stream doesn’t even come close to covering salaries or overhead.

The Post answers what was in (or near) Scranton — a toilet:

A simple pit stop by the side of the highway led to the theft of an priceless painting by Spanish master Francisco de Goya while it was being transported to New York from Ohio for an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum.

The 1778 masterpiece, “Children With a Cart,” was snatched when the professional art movers took a break on the side of the highway en route to the Big Apple and left their vehicle — and the nearly 5-foot-by-3-foot painting — unattended, said FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams.

When they returned to their vehicle, the movers discovered it had been broken into and the painting had been swiped, she said.

It was the only artwork they were transporting — and that makes investigators believe the thieves didn’t just chance upon the masterpiece.

By the way, the Post’s headline — “When You Gotta Goya You Gotta Goya” — is not half bad!

I still don’t understand what the “R” stands for but at least the Post is generous enough to share their picture of the victim with us:

Samir Sara, 23, allegedly had a one-night stand with 21-year-old Kristina Caban two years ago. When she called him afterward, he supposedly never phoned her back — becoming only one in a long line of men who had wooed and then mistreated the hot-blooded art student, a friend told The Post yesterday.

Caban is now charged with hatching the sick plan that led to Sara’s being branded on his torso last week with a four-inch “R” as revenge for the slight.

“She flocked to a- - - - - - guys,” said the classmate of Caban at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. “She’s a talented person. She’s also a genuine person. For her to do this, she must have been deeply hurt.”

Caban’s lawyer yesterday tried to minimize his client’s role in the searing Oct. 22 attack, which also resulted in the arrest of the suspect’s current boyfriend, Robert Testagrossa, 25. Testagrossa has been suspended from his $60,000-a-year civilian investigator job in the MTA’s Inspector General’s Office in the wake of the assault.

“Let’s get off the branding thing,” said Caban’s lawyer, James Friedman, shortly after his client was indicted by a Manhattan Supreme Court grand jury. “There’s a tremendous amount of speculation, innuendo and rumor. . . .”

Friedman called Caban “a good kid from a good home” and urged the public to “sit back and wait for the facts.”

Then again, you’ve got to like how the boyfriend somehow finds a way to misuse his position with the MTA to help his girlfriend (allegedly!) assault the man:

Sources have told The Post that Caban reconnected with Sara and made a date to have drinks with him in a Chelsea bar Oct. 22.

She then allegedly lured him to a room at the Chelsea Inn, where Testagrossa and the unnamed man were waiting with a gun and Taser.

There, sources allege, the men stole Sara’s cellphone and cash. Testagrossa shouted that he was “a Long Island police officer” while displaying a badge and ordering Sara to get on the floor. The men then allegedly bound Sara and branded him.

Although Testagrossa is no cop, the former high-school varsity wrestler carries a badge as part of his work for the inspector general of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency.

‘Bomber’ Pilot Crashes Plane:

Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle was instantly killed yesterday when his small plane slammed into an Upper East Side high-rise and exploded in flames.

The crash, which also killed Lidle’s flight instructor, spewed fiery debris onto the street, spurred a frenzied evacuation of building residents, and sent military fighter jets scrambling over Manhattan amid fears of another terror attack.

“[The plane] was sputtering. It looked like it lost a tail rudder. It went into the building sideways,” said Erroll Gindi, a witness to the disaster at 524 E. 72nd St., on the corner of York Avenue. “There was a deafening crash, and flames shot out of the building.”

. . .

A helicopter pilot who had been in the air over the East River at the time told authorities that he watched as Lidle’s plane performed wild “acrobatic maneuvers” moments before the crash, indicating that its pilot was likely trying to avoid the building as it experienced control problems.

Lidle’s death stunned the Yankee organization, which continues to mourn the 1979 loss of beloved Bronx Bomber catcher Thurman Munson in a plane crash.

Yes, yes — we know they’re called the Bombers, but jeez, can you not be so clever for one lousy day?

Then there’s this charming observation which I’m guessing isn’t in the Times:

The crash disintegrated most of the light plane, and both bodies were burned beyond recognition.

Last night, one of the victims remained strapped in his seat in the mangled cockpit, which lay on the street in front of the building.

The body of the other victim had been torn in half, with the lower part of his torso still missing.

See also: Yankee Cory Lidle Was On Plane That Crashed . . .; Yeesh.

God help me if I ever end up in the Post for accruing massive amounts of overtime:

If the city ever crowns an overtime king, the title would have to go to Pablo Martinez.

A senior systems analyst at the Board of Elections, Martinez pulled in $116,123 in OT in a 12-month period ending June 30, making him the city’s top overtime earner in the 2006 fiscal year.

Martinez’s total earnings came to $197,884, more than the mayor’s official salary of $195,000.

That alone would be impressive, except that Martinez also topped the charts in 2003, with $81,021 in OT, and in 2004, when he collected $93,385.

John Ravitz, the election board’s executive director, explained that Martinez essentially runs the agency’s entire computer operation.

“I wish I had two more bodies so he wouldn’t have to work those hours,” said Ravitz.

But with salaries that start at just $46,000, Ravitz said he hasn’t been able to find qualified computer-systems workers for two open slots.

. . .

Most of the other leading OT earners worked at the Transportation and Fire departments.

Anthony Mancino, a DOT supervising electrician who racked up $73,513 in OT in 2004, took in $108,845 this time, to bring his total earnings to $196,084.

Transportation officials told The Post last year that “overtime for ferry staff should decrease significantly” after new ferries were put into service and staffing levels were revamped.

The last of three new ferries began running in April.

But 21 of the agency’s 38 workers who made the citywide top 100 OT list had ferry duties.

One marine oiler — Theodore Archibald — earned 190 percent of his $45,082 base salary in overtime to bring his total paycheck to $130,694.

The city’s first order-of-protection for a pet has been issued following a recent change in the law. Mildly offensive Post quasi-homophobia added for your reading pleasure:

A jilted gay man turned into the wicked bitch of the west and beat up his ex-boyfriend’s tiny bichon frise, prompting the city’s first-ever order of protection for a dog.

Fredrick Fontanez, 20, now must stay 100 yards away from the pooch Bibi and have no contact with the dog, Judge Alex Zigman ordered in Queens Criminal Court yesterday.

ASPCA officials say that on July 20, Fontanez was dog-sitting for his boyfriend, Derek Lopez, at the latter’s house on 149th Avenue in Howard Beach, when the two had a fight over the phone at about 6 p.m.

Lopez allegedly told Fontanez, who lives in The Bronx, to be out of his house by the time he got home from work.

Sometime later, neighbors report hearing blood-curdling yelps and howls from the apartment where Fontanez, who is 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, was alone with 5-year-old Bibi, a cute, 15-pound, white powder puff of a dog.

“I heard him kick the dog. You know when a dog yelps, you know something is not right,” said neighbor Miguel Colon, 38. “I know when a dog is being hurt.”

Fontanez left when Lopez got home — and Colon told him what he had heard. Lopez was shocked when he saw the pup.

“A few minutes later, he knocks on my door and says, ‘Yo, look at this,’ He’s got the welts, he’s got black and blues,” said Colon, an animal lover. “It was black and blue over his spine, maybe four inches from his tail. You could see he was shivering, see it in his face.

“You know that’s not cool — that’s not cool. Because that dog can’t defend itself,” he said. “The guy should go pick on some of the pit bulls or Rottweilers around here.”

After an investigation by the ASPCA, Fontanez was arrested Wednesday. He was arraigned early yesterday and released with no bail on orders to stay away from Lopez and his canine best friend.

The extension of orders of protection to animals was signed into law just late last month by Gov. Pataki.

“This is precisely why my legislation is so necessary,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, who co-sponsored the fur-friendly bill. Abusing a loved one’s pet “is a way of saying ‘You’re next.’ It’s a warning.”

After revealing yesterday that Yvette Clarke sort of overlooked not actually receiving her degree, the Post Oppo Research machine makes Chris Owens prove he didn’t put up fliers calling David Yassky a rat:

A black Brooklyn congressional candidate denied having anything to do with putting up fliers calling his Jewish opponent a rat.

During a debate last night, Chris Owens — the son of Rep. Major Owens, who is vacating the seat in the 11th District — was asked if he was connected to fliers addressed to “Nasty Yassky.”

The posters refer to City Councilman David Yassky, who has been accused of moving into the district to run among a crowded field of blacks and take advantage of a split vote. “We don’t need any more rats or roaches in the neighborhood,” they read.

The fliers were next to campaign posters for Owens, who said he hadn’t seen them. Councilwoman Yvette Clarke called Yassky an opportunist, while State Sen. Carl Andrews said he “has the right to run.”

Just two and-a-half weeks to go until the September 12 primary . . .

After shining the light on the establishment’s health department violations, the Post returns to Shake Shack to see if everyone got the message:

The city’s trendiest outdoor snack bar continued to draw long lines of customers yesterday, but most of them hadn’t gotten the dirt on its latest Health Department inspection and the huge number of violations it’s racked up.

“I’m very upset by the violations,” said James DePrima, who quickly got off the Shake Shack line when told of the report.

“It’s especially upsetting because I had my family in the park recently and I insisted we eat at the Shack.”

One customer blamed the eatery’s location in Madison Square Park.

“When you have a restaurant in the park, there is going to be an inherent risk of vermin,” said Terry Fortunate, who also made a quick exit from the line.

Foreign-born New Yorkers make up 37 percent of the city’s population, according to the latest census data:

Immigrants have continued to surge into metropolitan New York since 2000, according to census figures released today, and that increase, combined with high birth rates, has elevated the foreign-born and their children in New York City itself to fully 60 percent of the population. The rate of change was even more pronounced in the 24 suburban counties around the city, where a record 20 percent of the residents are now born abroad.

The figures, while showing that the city’s gains from immigration were not nearly as marked as they were in the 1990’s, are nonetheless striking in their detail and magnitude.

In the city, the number of people who identified themselves as Mexicans, here legally or not, soared 36 percent in five years, and not merely as a consequence of improved counting. More than half the residents of Queens and the Bronx do not speak English at home. Nearly one in three black residents in New York City was born abroad.

The trends are reported in the American Community Survey, a new annual version of the federal Census Bureau’s long-form questionnaire designed to capture the nation’s demographic profile in a more timely moving picture, rather than a once-a-decade snapshot.

Meanwhile, the Times buries the Post’s lede (note the descriptive word the paper uses in the URL for this story):

Among children younger than 15, white residents who are not Hispanic have become a minority in the metropolitan area, an indication that within just a few years the New York region will become the first large metropolitan area outside the South or West where non-Hispanic whites are a minority.

The Post, on the other hand, doesn’t bury the Post’s lede:

The number of whites in New York City has been shrinking the last five years, while the Asian and Hispanic populations have been climbing, according to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Then again, the Post’s headline is “Whites Decline In City” . . .

Other interesting or notable data:

New York ranks first in the proportion of men and women — 35.2 percent and 30.2 percent, respectively — who have never married. The median age for first marriages by women is highest in Connecticut, at 27.5, and for men in New York, at 29.3. New York State also has the lowest proportion of households composed of married couples, 45 percent. Barely half the children in the city, 53 percent, are being raised by a married couple.

As ever, within the borders of the city there were great differences. In Manhattan, where the number of black and Hispanic residents declined, married couples with children living at home made up about 10 percent of households, but the rate is 27 percent on Staten Island. In the Bronx, more than half the families with children are headed by women.

The census counted more American Indians, about 33,000, than in any other city. Chinese is spoken by more than 350,000 New Yorkers, Italian by 103,000, Yiddish by 77,000.

While the number of Puerto Ricans in the city declined slightly, they remain the largest group among Hispanics, with 787,000. Dominicans, who number 532,000 — the largest number among foreign-born — are catching up with Puerto Ricans. More city residents still identify their ancestry as Italian than any other group, but West Indians are closing.

The Daily News is engaging in Postenfreude* again:

A Post vendor was caught yesterday tossing bundles of free promotional copies of the sad tab into Brooklyn trash cans.

“It might have been me, it might not have been me,” said vendor John Adams, 26, after a reporter watched him trash more than a hundred copies in three Fulton Mall trash cans.

The Crown Heights man said he was having difficulties giving away the rag.

He said he couldn’t leave his Jay St. spot until he’d given away all of the promotional copies, which featured an advertisement on the cover.

“It’s hard,” said Adams, who has been hawking the Post for three weeks. “People don’t want anything even for free.”

In March, at least 10,000 Posts were dumped into two Brooklyn recycling centers in a move that drew the attention ofnewspaper circulation authorities.

*Loosely defined as taking pleasure when the Post embarrasses itself. The inter-tabloid equivalent: “Newsenfreude”.

See also: Daily News vs. The Post; Tabloid Wars.

New York Daily News: “Feds rescue ‘Superman,’ nab pirating men of steal”.

New York Post: “COPS NAB MEN OF ‘STEAL’”.

The story — authorities bust a DVD pirating ring:

The feds yesterday charged 22 alleged members of an underground network with recording, printing and selling millions of counterfeit videos and DVDs in an elaborate scheme dating back to at least 1999.

“We believe it to be the largest video piracy syndicate worldwide,” said Mark Mershon, Assistant Director of the FBI in New York, announcing the arrests under a three-year undercover probe dubbed “Operation Knock-Off.”

The FBI arrested 13 accused members of two rings, including those who filmed the movies in theaters, printers who made video and DVD covers and distributors who sold copies of the flicks. Nine others are being sought.

Raids in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens yesterday uncovered evidence the syndicate was already geared up to make a killing off “Superman Returns.”

According to court papers, members of the rings recorded high-quality “masters” at theaters throughout the city, infiltrating previews and other limited showings.

Members known as “cammers” used camcorders on tripods to record the flicks, while “blockers” allegedly sat themselves in strategic positions around the theater to help prevent detection.

The distributors allegedly bought masters for anywhere from $40 to several hundred dollars each and then mass-produced them, selling copies for anywhere from $7 to $10 each.

“We had a camcorder making $400,000 a year just by delivering recordings two to three times a week,” said Scott McGaunn, a special agent with the FBI.

Doug Dechert writes in the New York Press about how it works when Page Six is running on all cylinders:

In early March of 2002, I was in Langan’s on 47th Street during happy hour, and through the crowded room I spotted Chris Wilson with The Observer’s George Gurley having an animated conversation with Barry Levine and Courtney Callahan from the National Enquirer. As I sidled over to the huddle with my back turned (some uncharitably disposed readers might call this eavesdropping), I was able to discern Wilson making an emphatic case to Levine, the Enquirer’s editor, that he and Gurley could give him the girl they insisted was then having an affair with Sopranos star James Gandolfini. Wilson said, “She won’t admit to you that she fucked him, but we’ll tell you as ’sources’ that she did. And you can quote from Page Six on top of that.”

Later on, I asked Callahan what that was all about, and she told me that Wilson and Gurley were encouraging the Enquirer to print a story echoing the one Wilson was doing for Page Six about Cynthia Demoss, a girl who told them she was Gandolfini’s mistress. Callahan asked me to look into it for her, and so I did.

I found out that Gandolfini was a habitué of Gaslight on 14th street, a joint where he’d had several encounters with Demoss. The staff there made a convincing argument to me that Demoss was a creepy barfly who seemed to be stalking Gandolfini until they finally had to eighty-six her. Peter Collins, the bar’s owner, told me that there was no way his friend Gandolfini had ever gone home with her. “The chick was such a pain in the ass,” he said “I mean, she used to steal the customers’ drinks.” I reported to Callahan that the whole thing looked like a set up.

Weeks after that conspiracy was launched at Langan’s, the Demoss story received a blind item in Page Six, three more items naming names in Page Six, a long piece in Cindy Adams’ Post column, an Enquirer feature story and even a Gurley interview (at length) in The Observer. Who knows how much this spurious nonsense contributed to the eventual breakup of Gandolfini’s marriage and family? As a PR campaign for a struggling actress, it showed some determination on the part of two guys for whom misrepresentation has possibly become second nature.

This Post thing seems to be getting more complicated:

Mr. Stern, 34, an admirer of Walter Winchell who is fond of fedoras and three-piece suits, had been working for The Post since 1997.

. . .

On the tapes, Mr. Stern asks Mr. Burkle to invest in his clothing line at one point, according to a person who said he knew what was on the tapes. He lives in a house in the Catskills which he bought in 2002, with his wife, Ruth Gutman, who Mr. Stern referred to as Snoodles, the nickname of a character from the 1942 movie The Palm Beach Story.

Actually, that’s just the ridiculous part. The complicated part follows:

But while the accusations against Mr. Stern were serious, it was the specter — raised by at least three people who said they knew what was on the tapes — that Mr. Stern implicated several celebrities and New York power figures in an undisclosed, symbiotic relationship with Page Six that prompted an extraordinary day of full-throated and at times gleeful gossip among those who love, hate and avidly read it.

Those who said they know what is on the tape said Mr. Stern named Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax films, and Ronald O. Perelman, the chairman of Revlon Inc., as among those who had finessed their coverage on the page. Through a spokesman, Mr. Weinstein flatly denied any improper relationship with the page and its main editor, Richard Johnson.

Mr. Perelman’s company had once hired Mr. Johnson’s finance, Sessa von Richthofen, to whom he is getting married Saturday, as an administrative assistant. The executive who hired her said today that she had not been pressured into hiring her.

. . .

In their meetings, Mr. Stern described three levels of “protection” he could offer to Mr. Burkle, according to those with knowledge of what is captured on the tapes.

When Mr. Burkle pressed Mr. Stern to explain how this would work, Mr. Stern at first cited a few examples involving his boss, Mr. Johnson. He said, for example, that Mr. Johnson, his boss, had a “script deal” with Mr. Weinstein — something Mr. Weinstein denied today. “The New York Post and Page Six have always been above board with our company,” said a Weinstein company spokesman. “There was never any script deal.”

He also said that Ms. von Richthofen was employed by Mr. Perelman, the financier.

(R. Kelly reference meant to underscore the faux gangsterism of the situation and a sense of disbelief about the incomprehensible turn of events, not to mention the fact that fedoras and three-piece suits are rather fey . . .)

(I suppose at this point it’s not a bad idea to reacquaint yourself with Sweet Smell of Success, in which case alternate titles for this post could include “The Hunsecker Proxy” or “Sweet Smell Of ‘Finesse’”.)

The worst thing about all these mafia stories is that it creates a culture in which Page Six freelancers shake down their subjects for either favorable or no coverage:

A freelancer for The Post’s Page Six gossip column is under investigation by the FBI on suspicion of making “extortionate demands” in return for not writing any damaging stories about Beverly Hills billionaire Ron Burkle.

Jared Paul Stern, who worked two days per week on Page Six, allegedly demanded $100,000 from Burkle, who made his fortune in supermarkets, plus an annual stipend of $10,000.

Sources close to the investigation say the FBI has been investigating for two weeks under the direction of Mark Weinstein, the chief of the economic-crimes division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and has Stern on video and audiotapes.

In exchange for money from Burkle, Stern allegedly would “refrain from writing damaging, negative stories and write puff pieces” flattering to Burkle.

Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Cindy Fucking Adams?

The Post gladly reports how the MTA is pointing the finger at those free morning newspapers for the increased number of track fires during 2005:

All those thousands of free newspapers being handed out at subway stations are to blame for a huge jump in track fires, transit officials said yesterday.

“The papers get put down on the platforms and then, due to the vacuum effect of the trains, get pulled into the tracks,” said Michael Lombardi, MTA senior vice president for subways.

While they’ve all been minor blazes, the number of fires increased by almost 20 percent in 2005 to 1,673.

Although NYC Transit added 116 cleaners and the agency is cleaning the tracks more systematically, the volume of trash is hard to overcome.

The aggressive distribution of the free dailies, such as amNewYork and Metro New York, along with increasing ridership, have caused the daily garbage haul to grow by 15 tons, Lombardi said.

Discarded food and other trash is also to blame.

The newspapers say they do not deserve to be blamed for the fires, and transit advocates and elected officials agree.

Renowned dirty fucker Peter Braunstein gets a Gawker-ready hairstyle piece in today’s Post:

Accused fire fiend Peter Braunstein may have stabilized since getting locked up in Bellevue Hospital, but his hairstyles have been all over the map.

Braunstein showed up for a routine Manhattan Supreme Court appearance yesterday sporting a shaggy new beard. It’s the fourth makeover in as many court appearances.

Since his arrest in December on charges he masqueraded as a fireman so he could kidnap and sexually torment a female co-worker, the former Women’s Wear Daily fashion writer has gone from curly haired to buzz cut.

Braunstein, 41, has told cops he slavishly follows his own press coverage — and is so image conscious he once complained that his wanted poster made him look “like a crazed Mexican.” But his lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, joked yesterday that no significance should be attached to this latest “look.”

“I don’t think they give you razor blades over at Bellevue,” Gottlieb quipped.

The Post’s two favorite targets get the borscht-belt treatment in one fine piece:

Tired of endless bungling, bickering and bad ideas, a group of diplomats from the United Nations went on a fact-finding mission this week to learn how a successful New York institution works. Unfortunately, they wound up at a Knick game.

Looking like fish out of international waters among the long-suffering Knick fans, the group, led by U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, donned red NBA caps as they watched from a luxury box at Madison Square Garden Wednesday. Also wearing the goofy headgear were the wife of China’s U.N. ambassador and Russia’s envoy. The diplomats were treated to a true Knick experience — the team lost to the Miami Heat, 103-83.

Someone at the Post gets it — reducing salacious, violent stories into theatrical components is the new inverted pyramid:

This is a love story with a moral: Don’t dally with your friend’s mommy or you might find a Valentine Day’s card carved on your face.

The characters: Elias Nazario, 18; his mom, Nelly; his pal Robert Quinones, 20; and her former boyfriend, a man known only as Freddy.

The place: 852 McDonald Ave. in Borough Park, where the aforementioned reside.

The back story: Robert is having a dalliance with Nelly under the unsuspecting eyes of Elias and the man known only as Freddy.

The action: Elias and Freddy find out about the affair on Valentine’s day, and Elias slashes Robert’s face, authorities say.

The result: Robert gets stitches. Elias gets Rikers.

And the past tense is for wussies like the Daily News:

On Valentine’s Day morning, Freddy goes to work. At 7:55 a.m., Robert wakes up to find several deep cuts on his face and Elias standing over him with a sharp metal object, authorities say.

Elias flees and his mother calls 911. Cops arrive. Robert is taken to Lutheran Hospital, where he gets stitches for the cuts.

Elias did it, he tells the cops.

The youth is picked up at his aunt’s home on Ocean Avenue and taken to the 66th Precinct stationhouse, where he is formally arrested at 2 a.m. Wednesday.

Later in the day, he is arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on charges of assault, menacing, harassment and weapons possession.

Unable to make bail of $2,500, he is lodged in Rikers.

Nelly stonewalls.

“Nothing happened here. I have no comment. It’s all lies,” she said yesterday.

Now that’s the way we like to read these stories!

The Post headline of the day is “Do You Believe This Sit?!”:

A ride home on the F train doubled the cost of Samantha Hoover’s groceries — after a cop wrote her a $50 ticket for putting the plastic bag on the seat next to her.

Sitting on the “mostly empty” Brooklyn-bound train Friday evening, Hoover, 33, said she tried to read a magazine, but her thoughts wandered between her day at work and the steak dinner she and her fiancé were going to prepare when she got home.

“Next thing I know, a police officer walks up and wants to know if I’ve ever been arrested,” said Hoover. “He asked for my identification and said, ‘You can’t put your bag there.’”

Hoover’s life as an outlaw was made possible by new MTA subway rules — prohibiting activities such as roller-skating or walking between cars, not to mention putting bags on seats.

They supplemented earlier restrictions on smoking and panhandling.

Taking up more than one seat had always been an offense punishable with a fine. But until now, it was enforced only against people sprawled across several seats.

Officer Mohammad Ishrat told Hoover to leave the train with him at the Jay Street/Borough Hall stop so he could check whether there were any warrants for her arrest, she said.

“I have had a couple of parking tickets,” she later confessed.

Instead, she tried to argue that her Whole Foods bag had not made any impact on the rest of the passengers.

“The train was empty,” Hoover said she told the cop.

Ishrat pointed at the plastic Whole Foods bag and explained it didn’t matter, she said. He then boosted the $46.73 she spent on steak, vegetables, strawberries and snacks with a $50 fine.

The NYPD did not return a call seeking comment.

Under the guise of a followup story about sleeper agent Wayne “Rip Van” Wiggins, the Post puts out a clear call for yet more cellphone pictures of sleeping agents:

Station agents, this is your wake-up call.

A Post reader spied yet another transit snorer dozing in his booth, and the paper has received a half-dozen similar reports yesterday from straphangers who didn’t have a camera handy.

“I can’t believe these guys are paid to sleep,” said Frank Donati, who spotted this agent taking a 7:45 a.m. nap last Friday at the Northern Boulevard station on the R line.

For historical reference, see Mountain Men of the Gila:

The most historically significant of the Gila mountain men was a contemporary of [James Ohio] Pattie’s named James Kirker (1793-1853). Kirker arrived at the Gila trapper’s headquarters, the Santa Rita copper mines, in 1826, and he stayed for a decade at least, trapping the Gila streams and acting as a guard, scout and manager of the mines. By his own account he was “highly successful” as a trapper. According to William C. McGaw, author of the Kirker biography, Savage Scene, Kirker was once gone off in the wilderness, hunting and trapping, for 18 months! As late as 1837, when beaver were of little economic consequence due to their scarcity, Kirker emerged from the Gila Wilderness with over 1,000 beaver pelts, only to lose the entirety to an Indian raid.

But Kirker would be of minor historical interest had his career ended with beaver trapping. Instead, following the Apache uprising in 1837, Kirker turned to a more lucrative pursuit: scalp hunting. Hiring out to the Mexican government at $200 per scalp, Kirker led vigilantes of 50 to 100 men, many of them Shawnee and Delaware Indians, on punitive expeditions against the Apaches. The scourge lasted a half dozen years and ranged over the wilderness, from Taos to Santa Rita to Chihuahua City. The toll of Apache dead eventually exceeded 500; the scalps hung in gruesome display in the Ciudad Chihuahua square. One of Kirker’s recruits, James Hobbs, wrote: “We would fight certain tribes . . . for the fun of the thing, and for common humanity, even if we were not rewarded for every scalp.”

There’s no mistaking the Post’s take on the new transit worker contract — “TWU’s Greedy Gloating”:

The Transport Workers Union was gloating yesterday that its damaging, illegal three-day strike resulted in a better contract for 34,000 subway and bus workers.

“Was the strike worth it? Yes,” read a large headline over a letter to union members from TWU head Roger Toussaint’s office.

“It’s about respect, and it’s about results.”

The letter continued, “We came back with more than was on the table before the strike . . . The 2005 transit strike was a big success. We went out strong. We came back stronger.”

Toussaint was particularly giddy about a hefty pension rebate that will be given to more than half the 34,000 members who made alleged “overpayments” toward their retirement from 1994 to 2000.

“We said we need pension justice. We got it,” Toussaint said on a Web site statement. He added that the refund will mean $8,000 to $14,000 for some 20,000 members.

Marvin Holland, a TWU executive board member who represents station agents, crowed, “The pension refund will be 10 times more than any fines we will get from the strike.”

One of the more amusing things you see are the daily snipes the two big tabloids take at each other — not always amusing enough to point out, but amusing nonetheless. So here’s a good New Yorker piece on the recent (Drudgetastic) kerfuffle between the Daily News and the Post:

No longer can it be said that the News, traditionally the more restrained of the city’s rival tabloids, lacks a fighting spirit. The paper, reeling (or so said the Post, many times) from a lotto-game debacle that awarded cash prizes to thousands of readers by mistake, stepped up last Monday and finally played Hatfield to the Post’s McCoy. First, the News touted its own success—“daily newsad sales hit record high”—while also noting the “sorry picture of the shrinking business prospects of the New York Post.” Then, over the next several days, it ran a series of articles exposing an apparent “dump-and-pump” scheme at the Post, a “frantic, desperate effort” to boost circulation through bulk sales. The News, of course, has the higher circulation of the two.

. . .

Meanwhile, back from vacation, Mort Zuckerman reported with pleasure that the attention seemed to be increasing Scratch n’ Match participation. He also said that the News’ dump-and-pump story, which referred to “bloody shrapnel from publisher Lachlan Murdoch’s carpet-bombing propaganda machine,” was not retaliatory. “That wasn’t a response, obviously, to this latest—what my grandfather would have called mishegoss, which is a Yiddish word for craziness,” he said. “Who was that sociologist at Columbia—Robert Merton?—who said that every group has a reference group? Our reference group is not the Post—it is our readers.”

Up at Post headquarters, Lachlan Murdoch tried to play nice. “We don’t really think about the Daily News that much,” he said. But when he learned that a reporter had spoken with Zuckerman he asked, “How were the Galápagos?” He referred repeatedly to “Scratch n’ Stiff,” without winking or smiling, and accused the News, on the issue of bulk orders, of being a “pot calling the kettle black,” since the News sells a lot of bulk copies, too.

Col Allan, the editor, arrived, complaining about the “hypocrisy of these people,” and seemed more eager for a scrap. “They’re still shoving fifty papers a day in bulk into the prisons of the mentally insane on Wards Island,” he said. “I mean, give me a break.”

“I might even read the Daily News if I were stuck in a white padded cell,” Murdoch said.

Allan laughed: “Yes, very good.”

Murdoch said that he thought the nicknames had gone too far.

“It may have been a little exuberant,” Allan said. “But you’ve got to remember that the folks at the Daily News have this curious view of the world, and it really is that they feel that they can throw shit at the fan and never get dirty.”

Allan got up to leave. “If they want to attack us,” he said, “they shouldn’t do it in the business section—because nobody reads it.”