IT’S TIME TO CLEAR THE ‘AIR’

At least we had the boobs. Next time a hurricane thunders across the land, it should be named Donald or Hillary for the two candidates who have wreaked such havoc and spread such a contagion of hate around this country that FEMA should provide hazmat suits at polling places.

So much of what they touch and have touched in their endless careers smacks of ugly. One of them even made the Al Smith Catholic charity dinner go south. And that takes some doing. Watching the two hate mongers roasting one another at the dinner, which isn’t supposed to be a Friars Club roast but a civilized affair in which the candidates pretend to be self-deprecating, was like watching a war in an orphanage.

Thank God for Maria Bartiromo’s breasts, which were barely contained in a low-cut red dress or the night would have been a complete downer. The boobs seen ’round the world loomed over the candidate’s heads like those in “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,” in which the newly giant woman in her newly gigantic bra hovers over the bar about to smash it to bits, and with it, her crooked husband and everyone else yukking it up below.

Bartiromo, trying to play down the incident, announced the next morning on Fox Business, “I’m going to quote Julia Roberts, ‘They’re called boobs, Ed. It’s not a big deal.’ ” Yeah, it is. Or rather, they are. They saved the entire Catholic dinner from erupting into a brawl when Donald got ugly; in other words, from turning the night into just another typical Trump rally.

While both candidates struck unnecessary blows, Donald, as he’s done at every debate, started out strong and collapsed into ugly. Really ugly. In a roomful of Catholics, he thought this would be a real kneeslapper: “For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.” Who writes his jokes, Rudy Giuliani? Then like a comic not understanding that the bombs are dropping all around him, Trump went on, “Everyone knows, of course, Hillary’s belief that it takes a village, which only makes sense after all in places like Haiti, where she’s taken a number of them.” Nothing like making fun of one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet for a big laugh. That’s presidential. And so for the first time in the 71-year history of the Al Smith dinner, boos, groans and shouts erupted instead of polite applause.

Hillary did better, but she’s about as funny as a broken toe in a tight shoe. But at least she didn’t make the world cringe, and even though Trump said she hates Catholics and she looked like she was going to be very unCatholic and blast him to bits, she kept it nasty but not crude. At least her roast/toast calmed Cardinal Dolan enough so that the poor man stopped looking like he was going to stroke out on the dais or, failing that smite the Donald with his zucchetto.

And never for- get, we did have the boobs-at the podium, not just behind it. Why does Airbnb even exist? And now thanks to Gov. Cuomo, it won’t exist in New York State—or at least advertising for illegal, unsafe, insecure, moneymaking, tax-avoiding dayslong rental properties that compromise the safety of all law-abiding neighbors, won’t exist.

Of course, within seconds of Cuomo signing the bill on Friday, Airbnb announced it was filing a lawsuit, calling it “typical backroom Albany dealing.”

In fact, Airbnb is the very definition of backroom. Short-term unregulated rentals are illegal. There is no vetting of the renters, or the apartment owners/ leasers. Individual apartments and houses lack the security of hotels, aren’t inspected for cleanliness and safety by the Health Department, and don’t even carry required insurance. Renters are felons, period.

Meantime, in this time of security concerns, your next door neighbor — for days — can be a terrorist, a drug dealer, a thief or failing that, a partier, a bed bug carrier or a rapist. I don’t want strangers on the other side of my wall every two days. Get a room! In a hotel.