The battle over New York’s carriage horses just got hunkier.
Hollywood badass Liam Neeson went one-on-one with killjoy Mayor de Blasio, slamming Hizzoner for vowing to ban the city’s 220-plus clip-clopping, carriage-pulling equines from city streets and Central Park.
“They’ll die, you know, darlin’, ” Liam, who at 6-foot-4 can pretty much look the 6-foot-5 mayor in the eye, told me in his gorgeous Northern Irish brogue.
The 61-year-old heartthrob interrupted his hectic A-list acting schedule to call me Thursday night, alarmed by de Blasio’s treachery.
“It’s criminal!’’ cried Liam. “This is an iconic, historic part of New York.
“The horses are incredibly well-treated. They’re regulated up the wazoo. They get five weeks’ holiday every year.’’ (How many people get that much down time?) “Tourists love them.”
He speculated that efforts to ban the carriage trade resulted from a land grab by greedy developers eager to get hold of horse stables on Manhattan’s West Side.
“I think it’s about real estate. I’m not the kind of person to use my celebrity’’ to promote causes, he said. But, “the horses are happy.”
“Don’t you agree, darlin’?’’
Be still my heart.
Liam warned that the lives of these graceful animals, who weigh between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds apiece, will be cut short if the horses get pink-slipped.
“Someone is going to take the horses in? To adopt the horses? Are they crazy? I don’t think so!
“They’ll go to the glue factory’’ — the proverbial place where horses are said to be killed to make adhesive from their hooves. Or they’ll wind up abandoned.
Liam plans to write to de Blasio, urging the mayor to keep the horses. “I’ll do whatever I can,’’ said the star, who’s considering making a personal appeal to the mayor and the City Council.
Liam’s loyalty to the carriage industry puts him at odds with de Blasio, who at a press conference two days before his Jan. 1 mayoral inauguration delivered these fighting words:
“We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer part of the landscape in New York City. They are not humane. It’s over.’’
It also puts him in the cross hairs of many nitwit celebrities, from actors Alec Baldwin and Mary Tyler Moore to singers Miley Cyrus and Pink, who point to isolated incidents — including the case of a horse who got spooked last September and bolted through the streets, upending his carriage on the West Side and sending two tourists to the hospital — as proof that the city is no place for horses. Warbler Lea Michele of TV’s “Glee,’’ who speaks for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told me in 2011 that an industry claim that carriage horses lead good lives “is the most blasphemous thing I’ve ever heard!’’
But Liam, who counts carriage drivers as some of his closest friends, isn’t one to cave to Hollywood hysterics.
“Some of these celebrities,’’ he told me with contempt, “are ill-informed. They should visit the stables and see how comfortable the horses are, and talk to the drivers.’’
In these days replete with girly-boys, the “Schindler’s List’’ and “Love Actually’’ star may be the last true Hollywood he-man, favoring roles that reveal both his macho side and his sensitive inner core. Playing a retired CIA agent in 2008’s “Taken’’ — a role he reprised in “Taken 2’’ and will play in the just-announced “Taken 3’’ — his character killed bad guys with zeal across Europe, but only in an effort to find his kidnapped daughter.
Liam lives in upstate New York with his two teenage sons from his marriage to actress Natasha Richardson, who died after a freak skiing accident in Canada in 2009.
Liam, who works nonstop, will soon start promoting his latest flick: “Non-Stop.’’
De Blasio, who presumably wishes no harm on horses, favors a plan by New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets — NYCLASS — to replace carriage horses with ridiculous antique-style electric cars. A joke.
The mayor did not respond to a request for comment about a foe he might consider worse than low taxes, Liam Neeson. A pity.
This is one tough guy who makes sense.
In brief: Hope for the best when Weiner pops up on TV
Serial pervert Anthony Weiner has a job! The former Democratic congressman and failed New York mayoral contender is taping a cameo — alongside former GOP National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin and ex-NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw — in the season finale of Amazon’s entry to the TV world, “Alpha House.’’
Starring John Goodman and Mark Consuelos, the show is about four senators who live together in a Washington town house. Let’s hope sext-crazy Weiner resists the urge to strip to his undies before the cameras.
Chill out, globe!
As the the killer polar vortex gripped the country on Tuesday, mercury in the city plunged to a record low of 4 degrees for Jan. 7.
All 50 states — including Hawaii — recorded temps below freezing. In Michigan, the town of Hell froze over.
In the Antarctic, a Russian ship carrying 52 scientists, reporters and tourists traveled to the bottom of the world to document global warming and shrinking polar ice caps. Instead, the ship got stuck for two weeks on thick ice. Even the Chinese icebreaker that came to free the vessel got stuck. Not to worry. Warming disciples were airlifted from the deep freeze by helicopter.
Like tales of vampires and zombies, stories of planetary warming scare the daylights out of sensible folk. You have more to fear from frostbite
Bridget’s done playing ‘bridge’
How much pain can one woman inflict?
Saying, “I’m responsible,’’ New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday wisely fired his now-ex deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, 41, after learning that the chucklehead plotted to close lanes on the GW Bridge to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who did not support Christie’s bid for re-election last year.
The evil prank resulted in four-hour traffic jams and slowed response times for ambulances.
An unemployed Kelly can do less damage.
Uniform betrayal
Eighty former cops and fire- fighters claimed they were hurt, depressed or unable to leave their homes after working at Ground Zero on 9/11 or at other gruesome tragedies.
Now, authorities allege that they were among 106 con artists, some seen on social media riding Jet Skis, piloting helicopters or running half-marathons.
The alleged con men pleaded not guilty.
I wonder — how do the alleged scammers sleep at night?