It should have been a peaceful week in the Big Apple. Alleged BlackBerry-hurler and face-spitter Naomi Campbell was safely out of the country and under the watch of Nelson Mandela. Howard Stern was helping the police nab a homeless evildoer who’d sprayed his girlfriend’s face with saliva. After talk of divorce, Yogic hip-hop honcho Russell Simmons held out the olive branch of an open marriage (he’s been seeing a young woman named Denise Vasi) to his more or less estranged wife–business partner, Kimora. In the spirit of détente, he laid out only two requirements for her potential boyfriends: “One, he’d better be sweet to Kimora. Two, he’d better love my children.” And “Page Six” part-timer Jared Paul Stern was caught asking Ron Burkle for $100,000 (plus a $10,000 stipend) to keep him safe from gossip harm. Sadly, just as the weather seemed to go off its meds this week with a midweek blizzard, this calm just wouldn’t hold. Riots erupted in Borough Park after rumors spread that an elderly Hasidic man had been roughed up by cops; witnesses claimed to have heard the city’s top uniformed officer yell, “Get these fucking Jews out of here!” Andrew Kissel, a much-loathed financier whose brother was poisoned three years ago, was himself stabbed to death in his Greenwich basement, prompting his father to say, “I haven’t read the Book of Job yet, but I’m about to.” A septuagenarian former cosmetics CEO was accused of throwing a tantrum in the buff (see Job 1:21: “Naked I came into this world and naked I shall return there”). Meanwhile, Yankees president Randy Levine modestly credited Joe DiMaggio, as well as Ruth, Gehrig, and Mantle for pushing the controversial $800 million stadium plan through the City Council. And yet amid the clamor, even as Hillary Clinton continued to insist that she knew what Jesus would do for illegal immigrants, a singular voice of seen-it-all forgiveness could be heard, giving hope for peace to return to these streets. “I feel no animosity toward him,” said a 63-year-old Brooklyn grandmother about the teenager who shot her as she sat on a park bench. “But he still shouldn’t be out on the street shooting.”

Related:

• Archive: “It Happened Last Week”
• Articles by Mark Adams
• Table of Contents: April 17, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!