This summer’s Great Times Square Boob War has a co-star.
The battle over a woman’s right to expose her breasts in exchange for tourists’ wrinkled bills drew the undivided attention of a man known for exhibitionism — Anthony Weiner.
The Democrat, whom Donald Trump called a “perv” and “one of the greatest sleazebags of our time,” weighed in on his twin obsessions in a New York Times Op-Ed last week.
Weiner shared his unasked-for views on the bickering that has long carried on between the state’s governors and the city’s mayors on issues of critical legal, social and jiggling import.
His chief example? Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move to usurp the authority of his fellow Dem, Mayor Bill de Blasio, by sending state troopers into Times Square to “interview body-painted topless panhandlers,” he wrote.
“We need to fix this out-of-whack balance of power,” he wrote, using an unfortunate choice of words, “and return more authority to New York and other cities.’’
What in the name of hooters is happening?
Last year, Kim Kardashian ushered in the season of the butt by posing for Paper magazine with her oiled and ample caboose exposed. But you know the age of the breast has arrived when Wee Willie Weiner makes a valid point about the politics of mammaries.
Weiner, of course, resigned from his congressional seat in disgrace in 2011 after getting caught sexting pictures of his alert manhood to random babes.
I need to lie down.
With vagrants infesting the city and schools embroiled in a grade-fixing scandal, folks in officialdom are squabbling like toddlers and creating a new layer of bureaucracy in feverish campaigns designed to rein in knockers.
Ladies known as desnudas roam family-friendly Times Square in thongs and feathered headdresses with only body paint concealing their forms above the waist.
As The Post first reported in April, some of these bimbos are the city’s new squeegee men. Like creeps who dress up as Spider-Man, Elmo or Mickey, some harass tourists, demanding tips after posing for photos.
Post reporter Amber Jamieson went undercover as a desnuda. After seven hours posing for pics with foreigners, local bozos and kids, Jamieson concluded that the painted ladies face extreme sexism.
The Naked Cowboy roams the square clad in his tighty-whities, placing the hands of female tourists on his butt for a photo, “and he’s regarded as a charming, quintessential New York experience,” Jamieson wrote.
But women who work for tips in the Crossroads of the World, surrounded by ads featuring scantily clad cuties, “are apparently shameful and inappropriate,” she wrote.
“I’m Team Topless.”
What to do? NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has a fabulous solution. “Just dig the whole damn thing up,” he suggested, referring to the pedestrian plazas created during the Bloomberg administration. That way, beggars in all states of undress and all manner of costume would have no place to congregate. Problem solved?
The mayor this month organized a task force to seek ways to drive aggressive panhandlers and bare-chested damsels from public view. A report is due Oct. 1.
I can hardly wait.
Women joined men in being legally allowed to display their nipples anywhere in the state after a 1992 appeals court decision. The mayor and governor may have an uphill climb inducing women to cover up.
I see only one winner here. Anthony Weiner has seized political relevance out of the bosom madness. But he draws attention from the No. 1 problem facing New Yorkers today: the city’s dwindling quality of life.