ROY EDROSO

OUTRAGE, shrieks the New York Post (Jan 9) headline, over a photo of an elderly Asian woman standing on some downtown street, guarding a table stocked with NYPD and FDNY hats and shirts.

We thought at first the OUTRAGE was that more and more New Yorkers of all ages are now forced to peddle for subsistence. But no, the OUTRAGE of which the Post speaks is that these peddlers are selling NYPD and NYFD logowear without a license. Thus, the profits for sale of these items go fully and directly to the peddlers, without a cash-out for the police and firemen (whose foundations are normally reimbursed via licensing).

Deputy Police Chief Michael Collins, when notified of this OUTRAGEous shortfall in cop revenue, told the Post the city would address it by "enforcing peddler regulation" downtown. At first glance, this seems a little hard on the peddlers, who are after all (as they told the Post's investigative team) only trying to make a living--and in these most difficult times.

According to former NYC comptroller Alan Hevesi, the city lost 79,000 jobs in the September 11 attacks, and the ripple effect on our economy is still spreading; in November, the most recent state statistics show, unemployment was up to 5.3%, and that's not counting the people who have given up looking for mainstream jobs--an ever-growing number which, I imagine, includes many of our street peddlers.

The Post, perhaps sensing this, somewhat blunts the economic angle, facing its report with a long, loud screed from belligerent drunk Steve Dunleavy, who explains that it's not about money, but about respect, decency, and Jesus. "Jesus Christ was not such a patsy, as we might have been told," slurs Dunleavy. "Like in Matthew 21, verse 12, where the J-man got major angry at some wise guys who set up business on holy ground--in the temple." The same is now going on at "New York's holy ground," continues Dunleavy, and that makes him "angry and maybe even a little violent...I'm with Joe Higgins, firefighter, in Afghanistan...I am with the family of Deputy Chief Ray Downey...I am with cops, I am with priests..."

And so on, in a Whitmanesque/Bushmillian stream-of-consciousness till the last column inches are filled with cries alternately mawkish and venomous--the style, increasingly, of our age.

Those who must scramble for a living were hit especially hard by the terror attacks--and continue to get hit, as returning Police Commissioner Ray Kelly inaugurates "Operation Clean Sweep," a new quality-of-life crackdown that includes peddlers among its targets. Osama Bin Laden has been devilishly hard to nail, but the poor, who are with us always, make an easy target.