Al Roker didn't know he'd signed up to honor a pervert.
The "Today'' show weatherman and his "20/20'' TV reporter wife, Deborah Roberts, agreed to host a fund-raiser for La Guardia HS next month. But the couple had no clue the guest of honor was to be folk singer Peter Yarrow — a convicted sex offender who admitted molesting a 14-year-old girl.
"As new parents at La Guardia High School, we were asked to host this annual gala long before the program was set,'' Roker, 59, and Roberts, 53, told me in a statement e-mailed by an NBC spokeswoman.
"Our role has simply been to help support the school.''
Roker and Roberts' 15-year-old daughter, Leila, attends La Guardia, the prestigious public high school on Manhattan's Upper West Side that specializes in the performing arts. But the pair didn't say if they planned to pull out of hosting the May 21 Parents Association event at Lincoln Center, which the school bills as its 2014 La Guardia Arts Hall of Fame GaLa! — "Peace, Love, and the Power of Song: Celebrating Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, & Mary)"
What does Madonna think?
The 55-year-old singer is mother to Lourdes Leon, 17, a La Guardia senior. I'll bet that one word of disapproval from Madge's lips would end this Yarrow madness.
Her rep didn't get back to me.
Yarrow, who rocketed to fame in the 1960s with Noel Paul Stookey and the late Mary Travers as part of the Peter, Paul and Mary singing trio, is a longtime peace activist and well-connected leftist. He serenaded Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park in 2011, sang at current Secretary of State John Kerry's 1995 wedding to Teresa Heinz, is godfather to Kerry's daughter from a previous marriage, Alexandra, 40, and traveled to Ho Chi Minh City in 2005 to apologize for America's involvement in the Vietnam War.
His résumé also includes a sex crime.
A 14-year-old girl and her 17-year-old sister went to Yarrow's hotel room in Washington, DC, in 1970 seeking an autograph, it was reported at the time. Yarrow, then about 32, answered the door naked. He made sexual advances that stopped short of intercourse, a tale recently repeated on the FrontPageMag.com Web site.
Yarrow served three months of a one- to three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to taking "indecent liberties'' with the girl. In 1981, the singer was pardoned by then-President Jimmy Carter on his last day in office.
Why did a president pardon a pedophile? Was it because Yarrow was married at the time to the niece of the late Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy?
Yarrow has repeatedly made excuses for his behavior. "You feel terrible about it, make your amends,'' he told the Baltimore Jewish Times in 2006. "In that time, it was common practice, unfortunately — the whole groupie thing.''
His "groupie'' was a child!
La Guardia is in an uproar, The Post's Josh Saul first reported. One parent called the decision to celebrate Yarrow "disgusting.'' A student wrote on the Facebook page for the school's vocal majors that she'd been informed by a teacher that any kid who felt uncomfortable could refuse to perform at the gala. Early this week, 10 boys and two girls did just that.
Yarrow attended the HS of Music and Art before it merged in 1984 with the HS of Performing Arts — the setting for the 1980 film "Fame.'' It was renamed the Fiorello H. La Guardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Notable grads include actors Jennifer Aniston, Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino.
Yarrow committed his dastardly crime more than four decades ago. But experts contend that sexual predators are rarely, if ever, cured.
In a statement released to The Post, Yarrow said, in part, "I hope my contrition and my efforts to help humanity over the years will allow me a measure of the public's forgiveness.''
"He has taken responsibility for his actions, paid his dues to society and showed remorse for what happened,'' reads a statement from Melinda Moore, co-president of La Guardia's Parents Association.
Protect the children. The school should honor someone else.
No Bode cares! Son in limbo
Olympic skier Bode Miller has a warped idea of what it takes to be a daddy. Miller, 36, temporarily settled a custody battle this week with his baby mama over thier son, Samuel Bode Miller McKenna. He calls the tyke Nathaniel.
For the next four months, the parents agreed that the kid will shuttle between the homes of his mom and dad. Miller insisted that the child talk to his busy father electronically via Skype.
Miller fathered the baby with former Marine Sara McKenna, 28, during a three-month fling in California after the pair met through a high-priced matchmaking service. Shortly after McKenna found out she was pregnant, Miller met, then married, pro volleyball player Morgan Beck. McKenna now lives in Manhattan.
None of this explains how Miller expects to raise a precious young one over the Internet.
What the hack is he thinking?!
New York's scariest cabdriver is back on the street.
A taxi driven by Mohammed Faysal Himon, 24, sheared off the left foot of British tourist Sian Green, 25, last August after the cruddy cabby jumped a curb at Rockefeller Center. Green's leg was then amputated below the knee.
Himon lost control of his cab, witnesses said, in a case of road rage against a bicycle messenger who, the cabby claimed, cut him off in traffic. He bleated to The Post at the time that he was a rotten driver and he didn't want to operate a taxi anymore. The Bangladesh native's hack license was suspended for 30 days by the Taxi & Limousine Commission — but he was never charged with a crime. He got his taxi-driving license back in September.
It seems nothing can get this menace off the road.
Perk-y pussycat people are my pet peeve
New Yorkers who prefer the company of four-legged fur balls to humans now can spend time at a pop-up cat coffee shop set up by Purina on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In Japan, the feline-deprived pay about $12 an hour — $24 for as long as they want — for the privilege of petting strange cats and feeding flavored milk to random critters.
I hope I never get that lonely.
Harem Scare 'Em
Serial cheater Tiger Woods' ex-wife, Elin Nordegren, and his current gal pal, Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, "laugh and talk like they're girlfriends,'' a source told US Weekly magazine.
Lose the faithless golfer, Lindsey, and keep your girlfriend. You never know when you'll need a shoulder to cry on.
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