Tantrum-prone Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter may have gone berserk on a construction crew setting up scaffolding across the street from his West Village manse, but he's dealt with this kinda shit before, okay? Today's New York Post reports that after enduring several hours of clanging, a shorts-clad Carter emerged from his lair and "snatched a 5-foot rail and flung it to the ground in exasperation."

No media naïf, the chastened-sounding editor used his famous Ottawan wit to diffuse the Post's scoop, saying that scaffold hurling is "a venerated Canadian sport, like curling." Of course, a decade ago, workmen outside his home were a lot more ominous.

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In August of '97, after VF published a hit piece by Jennet Conant strongly implying that then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was having an affair with his press secretary, Christine Lategano, Carter awoke one morning to find a crew ripping up the sidewalk outside his house. At the time, the city's Transportation Commissioner, Christopher Lynn, called rumors of a Rudy vendetta "Pure paranoia ... But what do you expect from people who deal in lies and fiction, people who can't tell the difference between truth and fiction?"

Maybe Bloomberg is sick of him chain-smoking at the Waverly? In any case, we're not quite sure when Carter became so sensitive to noise. What about all that time he spent workin' on the railroad while pretendin' to be Jewish?

Photos: Ronald Asadorian/New York Post