Call it the National Forgiveness League.
Gun-toting, newly minted Jet wide receiver Plaxico Burress couldn’t get his pic ture in the paper two years ago without handcuffs.
Now, all is forgiven. Heck, it’s as if nothing ever happened.
Fresh from 20 months in the slammer, Plaxico (center) is again ready to ply his millionaire’s trade, switching from the ADD-afflicted Giants, who wanted him back, to the amnesiac Jets, who giddily forked over more than $3 million for his company.
And why not? As he left the stir, Plax had changed from thug to crusader, lecturing boys, like his own son, to steer clear of firearms. He’s a changed man!
Or is he?
Here’s what he told “Good Day New York” in June, nine days after getting sprung from an upstate prison on a weapons conviction, clad in a gangster’s hoodie although it was hot:
“I believe it was totally blown out of proportion,” whined Burress, who idiotically shot into his thigh in a crowded nightclub in 2008.
He blamed the media. He blasted a furious Mayor Bloomberg, whom he said “overgeneralized.”
“It was just bad judgment, a bad decision . . . It just goes to show that I had lifelong dreams since I was 7 years old to get to the NFL, and I made one bad decision. I had those things taken away from me so quickly. One bad decision so quickly took everything away.”
Plax doesn’t get it. He’s far from alone.
Where have all the role models gone? The National Football League today is chock-full of spoiled testosterone cases, churned out of the nation’s finest universities with meaningless diplomas and chips on their broad shoulders.
“And it keeps getting worse,” said one football insider. “You can’t overstate the problem.”
Quipped my Post colleague, columnist Phil Mushnick, “These college presidents could never withstand a racketeering investigation.”
The Jets — a team one e-mailer referred to as “Chain Gang Green” — have assembled a fine collection. There’s Plax, twice accused of domestic violence, only to have restraining orders rescinded. And wide receiver Santonio Holmes, who last week celebrated a new, five-year, $50 million contract by shirtlessly chugging a $215 bottle of Cristal on Page One of this newspaper. Suspended four games last year for smoking pot, Holmes (left) is one strike from being suspended for the season.
There’s Antonio Cromartie (right), the cornerback who, at 27, has fathered nine children by eight women in six states.
The NFL says it’s run programs since the ’90s to deal with this stuff. Sounds like trying to plug a waterfall with a toothpick.
“We have policies on substance abuse, weapons, personal conduct. All employees are held accountable,” said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello.
“We have 2,000 players going through the system every year. It’s a small number who attract attention.”
He mentioned Michael Vick, the Philadelphia Eagle quarterback who did time for organizing dogfighting, as an example of hard-line football Commissioner Roger Goodell allowing players “to redeem themselves.”
But it goes without saying that if a cop, office worker or teacher (well, maybe not a city teacher) engaged in behavior half as egregious, the employee would be on the street faster than a Plaxico quick draw.
Baltimore Raven linebacker Ray Lewis, initially charged with murder in a 2000 Atlanta bar fight in which two men were stabbed to death, pleaded to misdemeanor obstruction of justice. Now he does promos for the YES network.
“Talk about a mixed message,” said my insider.
Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was twice accused, then cleared, of sexual assault. He was ordered to undergo “professional behavior evaluation,” and suspended six games last year. That punishment was reduced to four.
In each case, the athletes complained that they were the victims — of overzealous prosecution, of too-tough punishment. Of being told, “No.”
Plaxico is in good company.
The disgrace of a crass act
Forced labor is alive and thriving in a Brooklyn school.
Principal Altagracia Liciarga, of Multicultural HS in Cypress Hills, enlisted five Spanish-speaking immigrant students for a “field trip” hauling heavy furniture last December. Two scared teens sat in the dark, freezing cargo hold of a U-Haul truck for hours, bouncing around like pingpong balls. Lucky no one was crushed.
Guess what. The Department of Education put a letter of reprimand in Liciarga’s file. A joke!
“I . . . wonder whether the same standard of justice would have been applied had [school officials’] children been the ones sent out in the back of that cold, dark and uninsured U-Haul truck,” an Ed. Department source told The Post.
In some places, I guess the lives of Dominican kids come cheap.
Goodbye, Charlie
Dying! Charlie Harper, played by Vatican assassin Charlie Sheen on “Two and a Half Men,” reportedly will be killed off in the CBS show’s season premiere Sept. 19.
It’s unknown how Charlie will bite the dust, but I think his ex-wives/girlfriends/goddesses should band together and stage a bloodletting. The world will spin nicely without Charlie in it.
SANITY WINS AT G. ZERO
You’ve been heard, New Yorkers.
A 15-story megamosque and Muslim cultural center won’t tower over Ground Zero after all. You can forget about seeing a massive, $100 million Park51 project a stone’s throw from the spot where thousands were murdered in the name of radical Islam, the developer told The New York Times.
“If the community only wants four or five floors, it’s going to be four or five floors,” conceded Sharif El-Gamal, who controls 45-51 Park Place. But building even four floors will be tough, as fund-raising for the mosque (complete with sex-segregated swimming pool) has yet to start, due to the enormous groundswell of protest.
El-Gamal said it will take five years, minimum, to add anything to a site that now holds a Muslim prayer spade and yoga studio.
A month before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, this is good news.
‘Frasier’ for Apple mayor
Kelsey Grammer, actor and four-time husband, told The Post he plans to run for office when he quits acting, perhaps in this city, where wedlock-challenged Rudy Giuliani thrived. Ex-wife Camille says Grammer wants to be president. His qualifications?
A “narcissistic personality” works in both Hollywood and government, he said.
Grammer stands out in lefty La La Land as an anti-tax, small-government conservative Republican, So go for it, Mr. Narcissist.
In an ego smackdown, he’s won my support from that leftist blowhard who’s threatening to run for office, Alec Baldwin.