WHEN YOU'RE TOO TIGHTLY WOUND FOR ANDREA PEYSER...

The New York Post's Andrea Peyser is no liberal, and no shrinking violet. She once said an incident of reported sexual harassment in the New York Jets' locker room was the fault of the alleged victim, a female reporter. She wrote that Katie Couric on her first night hosting the CBS Evening News "looked like a little girl who had to go potty" and "cross[ed] her bare legs like some ridiculous tramp," while expressing regret that Couric didn't "fall flat on her face -- which would have provided a much-needed break in the tension." She helped start the "Ground Zero mosque" nonsense with columns last May that favorably quoted the monstrous and loathsome Pam Geller. She loves the tea party and thinks the movie The Kids Are All Right is a vicious assault on Western morality.

So you'd think she'd be Carl Paladino's kind of gal, right? Apparently not. Apparently he makes her feel a bit squeamish:

Why so angry?

Carl Paladino romped through the Columbus Day Parade in Howard Beach, Queens, like a hyperactive puppy, kissing women and men with equal abandon and handing out lollipops -- he calls them "suckers" -- from a trick-or-treat bag.

Suddenly and without warning, storm clouds overtook every inch of his being.

"F--k that!"

Stepping into a pizza parlor, friends, supporters and waiters watched, in fascination and horror, as Mr. Nice Guy turned on a dime into a sputtering, cursing, Incredible Hulk.

"F--k it!" railed Paladino, who came out of nowhere to become the Republican candidate for governor of New York. "I'm not going to put up with this s--t!"

This was part of a rage-gasm Paladino had in response to coverage of his affair and out-of-wedlock child. You might expect Peyser to find this beghavior appealingly feisty, but no:

Fifteen minutes after the outburst, [campaign manager Michael] Caputo returned. Slowly, Paladino's spirits lifted....

He looked at me. "You seem like a nice lady." It was the closest he came to an apology.

...is he fit to lead?

...Paladino intends to ride a wave of anger all the way to the governor's mansion.

If he doesn't explode.

And all this is in addition to Paladino's caught-on-video dustup with Peyser's Post colleague Fred Dicker.

Now, it may be that Peyser and Dicker are just following the lead of their corporate masters -- Rupert Murdoch and the top people at the Post may feel that Andrew Cuomo will win, or at least is a very good bet, and they don't want to get on his bad side. Murdoch does like to get in good with non-right-wingers when they're going to seize power -- see, most famously, his close relationship with Tony Blair. Murdoch, of course, held a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton and later praised Obama. (So why did Murdoch's media properties turn on Obama after the election? I think Murdoch made the assessment that thwarting Obama's agenda was best for his business, and that Obama wasn't tough enough to beat him in a fight. Cuomo, by contrast, is said to be "the dirtiest, nastiest political player out there" by Eliot Spitzer; if that's true, maybe there are advantages to being that way in a world where Rupert Murdoch still slithers around.)

Peyser's not really unloading on Paladino, so perhaps Murdoch is hedging his bets. But he's certainly not in Paladino's corner, which tells me the Dems have this one.

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One more amusing Paladino moment: he's been accusing Andrew Cuomo of having had affairs during his marriage to Kerry Kennedy -- and apparently his thesis is that Cuomo had affairs and he, Carl Paladino, didn't. I can't embed the video, but check out what Paladino says at around 1:33 in this story:

"What affairs has he had? Obviously, I haven't had any."

If you think he means that he hasn't had any extramarital affairs recently, well, neither has Cuomo, because Cuomo's marriage broke up in 2003.

Paladino has a ten-year-old daughter by another woman. What is he saying happened -- the Immaculate Conception?