US News

Give Babs the boot!

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Barbara Walters — the butcher’s bestie?

The 82-year-old ABC News doyenne and dizzy dame on the “The View’’ has some explaining to do. Then, she needs to get off the air ASAP, before she hurts someone.

Last week, Walters was revealed as having developed a serious girl crush on Sheherazad “Sherry” Jaafari, top press aide to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and daughter to the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations. At 22, she could be Babs’ granddaughter.

In a move that could have grave international repercussions, Walters traded on her reputation to help the gal, who affectionately calls Babs “my adopted mother.”

It begs the question: Why is Walters free to pollute the air waves?

Late last year, Jaafari arranged for Walters to land an exclusive interview with the murderous mongrel Assad. Barbara should have thanked her new BFF with flowers.

Instead, the legendary broadcaster put the reputation of ABC, not to mention the interests of this country, on the line to help the Syrian press chippie.

And it proves that for a gal like Jaafari, getting ahead doesn’t require smarts or broadcast experience. (Chelsea Clinton on NBC, anyone?)

All she needs is Barbara.

Walters performed her Jaafari-planned interview with Assad last December. In it, he brazenly denied ordering bloody crackdowns on his people, including the massacre of women and children. More than 9,000 have died.

And here, Jaafari proves she is complicit in Assad’s brutal regime.

In e-mails leaked by a group waging civil war against Assad to London’s Telegraph, Jaafari assures the boss — whom she calls “The Dude” — that pulling the wool over Western eyes is a piece of cake.

The “American psyche can be easily manipulated,” she wrote.

Maybe Walters knew she’d climbed into bed with a killing machine. Babs proceeded to ask Assad, gingerly, about violence in his country. It made the tender soul say he felt “humiliated.”

He fired Jaafari, and she moved to New York. Weeks later, she had an intimate lunch with an eternally grateful Walters at The Mark hotel, and hit up her dear “mother” for a job at ABC.

“I told her that was a serious conflict of interest and that we would not hire her,” a shame-faced Walters said last week. That did not stop her from personally contacting Jonathan Wald, executive producer for CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” — and son of former ABC News chief Richard Wald — to pressure him to take Jaafari on. She was too hot to handle, but continued to feed from Barbara’s trough.

In January, Jaafari asked her mentor to get her into Columbia University’s prestigious School of International and Public Affairs.

“If there is any way you can give my application a push, I would really, really appreciate it,” Jaafari wrote. “You did mention you knew a professor there. I will buy you some jewelry from Syria.”

Two days later, Walters pressed the elder Wald, a Columbia lecturer.

“This young woman, whose resume is attached, is the [daughter] of the Syrian Ambassador to the UN. She helped arrange my interview with Assad.

“She is brilliant, beautiful, speaks five languages. Anything you can do to help?”

Wald responded the next day: “I will get [the school] to give her special attention. I am sure they will take her.”

The School of International and Public Affairs rejects four out of five applicants. Jaafari is part of the fall 2012 class, the school confirmed to The Post.

The Babs scandal comes at a tense time in US-Syrian affairs. Last week, unarmed UN peace monitors were fired upon while trying to reach the site of a massacre. An angry Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said it was time for Assad to go.

Barbara Walters has violated every rule of journalistic ethics. She’s shown she can be bought for the price of an interview. And Columbia has cheapened itself by sucking up to an aged news hound.

One wonders how many other times Walters scored by trading on her influence. How many hard questions she’s failed to ask to repay those who did her favors.

This is Columbia’s shame. It should spell Walters’ end.

A hole-y edict in Albany

Sorry, kids. Mutilators on St. Marks Place in the East Village — the body-piercing capital of North America — may soon ask for ID before sticking a stud in your tongue.

After I revealed in April that New York government, which forbids cats in The Algonquin lounge and craves banning Big Gulps, has no minimum age for getting one’s intimate parts pierced, Albany took action. The Assembly last week passed a bill requiring written parental consent before anyone under 18 can get sliced and diced, the bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz of Queens, announced. The Senate has a similar bill in the works.

This is bad news for the 12-year-old girl I saw getting a lip ring installed. And good news for parents who must deal with the drama of nasty infections and scarred children.

The $#!t hits the Met fans

After enduring cruddy seasons and the loss of beloved shortstop José Reyes, many readers say they’re born-again Met fans. Not so fast.

After learning that misogynist pot-head lefty comic Bill Maher bought a minority stake in the team, some are bailing.

Chris Johnson wrote: “Bill Maher is the only human being I have encountered in my 34 years which leaves me speechless in a state of blinding rage.’’

Maher once compared dogs to mentally challenged kids and has reduced Sarah Palin to an unprintable word that rhymes with “bunt.’’

He’s bad luck for the Mets — and a scourge for fans who’ve suffered so much.

Whole new meaning to ‘jet $et’

Women (and men) who yearn to meet millionaires during the competitive summer travel season should fly Delta, which jets around more fat wallets than any other airline.

So says a survey of 50,000 rich guys conducted for Seeking Arrangement.com, the world’s largest “sugar- daddy dating Web site,’’ and SeekingMillionaire.com, the “leading millionaire matchmaking’’ site.

Some tips:

The most generous millionaires fly American. The wealthiest take United. And the cheapest? Southwest.

So why do I always get parked next to the poor, fat lady?

Play taps for Stuy High ‘tapping’

Pimple cases at top-performing Stuyvesant HS have long posted end-of-year lists of hot kids they’d like to “tap’’ (nerdspeak for “have sex with”).

Now Principal Stanley Teitel has enforced a dress code: no bare shoulders, naked midriffs or exposed underwear. Some kids were so outraged that they bared skin for last week’s “slutty’’ protest.

No telling whether Stuy pervs are still tapping.