Strike!

CONFRONTED WITH AN increasingly hostile contract dispute with the FDNY and NYPD labor unions, Mayor Bloomberg is trying to put on a tough facade (which, we might add, is always an embarrassment). Late last week he mentioned that it was fine with him if they wanted to strike during the convention. Sure, go right ahead, he double-dog-dared them, no skin off his ass. We're a great city; we can handle it, was the mayor's message to New York.

No doubt he's right, but you just know Bloomberg is sweating under the sheets at night. His political future hinges on the success of this event as much as anything. The image of hundreds of heroic New York cops and firefighters carrying picket signs in front of the Garden would not fade quickly. It would also make the mayor look bad in front of the entire country, most of which has been trained to put NYC's uniformed public servants just below fluttering angels in the cosmic scheme of things. Two and a half years without a contract! After what they did on 9/11?!

No, it wouldn't look good at all.

Add to that the weakened security force around the convention, and a few hundred thousand protestors who could then waltz right into Central Park with or without a permit and step on all that taxpayer-financed grass, and the city might not soon recover. And who would keep an eye on all those bomb-tossing anarchists? Or Mike Wallace? Then there's the very real possibility that the cops and firefighters might start brawling amongst themselves. (We'd like to suggest the city prepare 10,000 custard pies to be kept on hand for precisely this eventuality.)

Yes, it could very well be absolute chaos-exactly the sort of chaos the city has spent millions trying to avoid. Of course, if he'd put the money in the right place initially, or declined to get our city into this mess in the first place, Bloomberg wouldn't have to worry about all this now.

We're not always the biggest fans of cops and firefighters, but we're behind them 100 percent this time. Not so much because we support their demands-we think the teacher's union, which is not threatening a strike, deserves to see a raise first-but because we think a massive strike coinciding with the convention would be just swell.

Hoopy-doopy! as a pair of cartoon gophers once exclaimed, We have fun!