US News

NY nightmare-athon

Take a flying leap off our streets!

The New York City Marathon has for 42 years clogged Big Apple byways with the promise not only of promoting fitness to couch potatoes. Marathon organizers boast of raising 26.2 miles worth of big bucks for charity.

Well, they don’t.

This should make every New Yorker howling mad. The New York Road Runners Club, the diabolical not-for-profit that runs the marathon, has turned into a money-sucking black hole that does precious little for humans who prefer to walk. Or lie down.

Last year, the club raked in an astounding $53.8 million from runners’ dues and things like TV sponsorships, according to the latest tax filing first revealed by The Post’s Jeane MacIntosh.

So where did the money go?

Astonishingly, less than $494,000 went to charity. That’s less than what the Road Runners pay the org’s supremely arrogant CEO, Mary Wittenberg — $501,000.

Seven top execs last year earned a combined $1.8 million. The organization also paid monster fees to groups on which its board members sit, creating a circle-jerk of legal money-grubbing that benefits high-flying board members.

One thing is clear: The race doesn’t care about the common, physically uncoordinated, man or woman.

After The Post revealed the massive moneymaking scheme that is the marathon, some runners balked. These men and women pay hundreds in fees to the Road Runners Club, even while they’re expected to personally raise money for charity.

“I feel used,’’ said a pal, who was set to run his first marathon when it was abruptly canceled.

“They’re lining their pockets off our backs.’’

My favorite listing is buried deep inside the Road Runners’ tax filing. Marathon organizers squandered $72,000 — an entire salary — to hire a firm to lobby state and city officials. For a road race?

The lobbyist was paid to bug officials to give money to Road Runners Club youth programs. Also, to support legislation “permitting out-of-state medical providers to volunteer as part of the medical team at the 2011 ING New York City Marathon.’’ Road trip to Albany!

The Road Runners handed me a statement that read, in part, “As a not-for-profit, we raise funds to support the programs and events for youth and adults that further our mission to help people through running, lead healthy lives and fight problems such as obesity and diabetes.’’

Hefty salaries? Not addressed.

The marathon was founded in 1970 by the late Fred Lebow (Central Park statue pictured), who pulled $300 from his own pocket so 127 people could run around Central Park. Just 55 finished the race.

Now the marathon draws 47,000 runners from Queens to Kenya. Before the event was canceled, officials vowed to up their charity to $1 million for Sandy victims, a tiny fraction of what the race pulls in. Until Mayor Bloomberg bowed to pressure, and killed the race.

The imperious Wittenberg howled.

She blamed not the storm but the media for endangering the welfare of marathon runners!

The struggle to recover from Sandy, “fueled by the resulting extensive and growing media coverage antagonistic to the marathon and its participants, created conditions that raised concern for the safety of both those working to produce the event and its participants,’’ she whined.

Those are fighting words.

It remains a mystery why Wittenberg wasn’t fired on the spot from her fat job for sheer incompetence and abject idiocy. But one thing is clear.

The New York Road Runners Club has outlived and outspent its usefulness. Run, if you like.

The mayor should kick these money-sucking bozos out of town.

Gen. XXX romps put us at risk

While Gen. David Petraeus and Co. had their hands full with strange women, who watched over the country?

Petraeus quit as CIA director after admitting to an affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, who allegedly sent threatening e-mails to Petraeus’ close, personal friend, socialite Jill Kelley.

Meanwhile, the US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is being probed for exchanging 20,000 to 30,000 pages of inappropriate e-mails with Kelley. (The Washington Post said it was fewer.) In more than 20 years of marriage, I don’t think my husband and I have exchanged 300.

An FBI investigator sent Kelley shirtless photos of himself, The Wall Street Journal reported. Petraeus and Allen each penned letters supporting the child custody of Kelley’s twin sister, Natalie Khawam, called “unstable’’ by a DC judge. Petraeus denies giving Broadwell sensitive military information found on her computer.

And President Obama said he’s seen no evidence “at this point’’ that national security was imperiled by l’affaire Petraeus.

Whew.

Tune in to the next episode of the soap opera “All My Spies.’’ You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll feel incredibly vulnerable.

Joining Oscar in trash

Elmo’s not a pedophile!

“Sesame Street’’ was upended this week when Kevin Clash, who gives voice to the cuddly Elmo character, was accused of having had sex with an underage boy. But the accuser, now 23, recanted, saying his affair with Clash began only after he was of legal age. The age of consent in New York is 17.

Clash, 52, a divorced dad, had been accused of sleeping with the lad when he was 16 and Clash was 45. In an e-mail sent after the accuser turned 18, Clash confessed to Elmo’s underside. “I’m sorry that I keep talking about sex with you,’’ TMZ reported he wrote. “It’s driving me insane.’’ He said his assistant would book a ticket to New York so they could talk, or whatever.

Show makers at Sesame Workshop said Clash, now on a leave of absence, showed “poor judgment’’ by using work e-mail to pursue extracurricular shenanigans.

So Elmo’s not a perv. Try explaining to kids how he used a beloved kiddie show to woo a young man.

A Lhota love

He got subways running within days of Superstorm Sandy. Now, MTA chief Joe Lhota is getting mayoral love from some of the city’s movers and shakers, The Post’s David Seifman reports.

Lhota’s a fine choice (and not just because he said Mayor Bloomberg acted “like an idiot’’ after the storm.)

I have a challenge:

Keep down the fares on crowded and dirty trains, Joe. You’ll have my vote.

Trouble brews

Here’s an excuse never to come to work. A new study claims that by 2020, Arabica beans used to brew coffee will be hurt by global warming. And Arabica could be extinct by 2080, according to Royal Botanic Gardens in tea-crazy England.

It sounds like a horror tale concocted by Al Gore. No joe? I wonder if global-warming skeptics like me are exempt.