It is said that once a man be comes a bishop, he never again hears the truth or eats a bad meal. Imagine, then, the pampered life of the Emperor of Bloomstan.

To understand how King Mike could deny the snow truth that all New Yorkers could see, you first must understand his golden bubble. It’s not just the weekend trips to warmer climes, or the routine comforts of a multibillionaire with homes here and there.

It’s that he surrounds himself with yes men and women. They don’t dare bring him bad news. They know he doesn’t want to hear it.

We can call them cowards, and they are, but that misses the point. The corruption of power multiplies over time, and few inconvenient facts penetrate the walls of his bubble these days, especially now that he is focused on winning the White House.

The mayor himself is the problem, and it won’t be fixed until he decides to fix it. To save the city and his reputation, he’s got to get his head back into the job.

So far, there is zero evidence he will. His performance last week was distressingly shoddy. The failure to competently manage the Sanitation Department was only the tip of the blizzard.

The greater failure was to understand and manage public expectations. His reaction to the criticism was a microcosm of the worst moments of his tenure. The tone-deaf elitist, the haughty rich guy who oozes contempt for anybody who challenges him — all of it captured on the X-ray cameras of television.

“I regret everything in the world,” he snapped at one press conference, secure in his screw-you attitude. He insisted the sanitation commissioner was “the best sanitation commissioner the city has ever had.”

In his bubble, that’s self-evident. If the sanit man weren’t the best, the self-declared best mayor would not have appointed him.

Imagine being the deputy mayor or lesser aide who knows that New Yorkers are rightfully furious. After the mayor’s public lashing of critics, few are the brave souls willing to tell him the truth and risk a blow-up or banishment.

Ah, but perhaps the King didn’t know, didn’t realize the life-and-death implications of ambulances stuck in the snow.

Perhaps, but then it was his choice not to know or to care. All roads lead to the leader.

He bought the third term not because he wanted it, but because it was the best job on the market. He wanted to run for president but didn’t have the courage to try.

Now he and New York are stuck with each other, but we’re not really in it together. Emotionally and mentally, he has checked out. The job is beneath him now.

So New York burns while he fiddles. The signs of imperiousness are everywhere.

The CityTime scandal, an $80 million rip-off, was just another day at the office for him. Bike lanes proliferate even though nobody except a few zealots want them.

Commissioners in health and transportation brazenly fudge facts to sell his pet projects. Land-use rules are manipulated to justify sweetheart deals to favored contractors, such as the whopping homeless shelter on West 25th Street.

It’s a rotten time to have a disengaged mayor. If Andrew Cuomo is the reform governor he promises to be, revenues from the state will be slashed. That will make City Hall’s job tougher.

The Sanitation budget shows the hard times are just beginning. Spending has gone up 20 percent since 2006, even as its uniformed work force has fallen by nearly 10 percent. So we’re paying more, and as we saw last week, getting less. That can’t go on.

The only hope is for a course correction at the top. And New Year’s is the perfect time for a new beginning. But even kings can’t merely wish a change. They must commit to it and work at it, all day and every day.

So which is it, Mayor Mike? Are you in or out?

HERE’S THE PLAN: Gov. Cuomo during his inauguration ceremony at the state Capitol as he begins his quest to clean up Albany and restore economic order to the state.

Bam’s act on ‘center’ stage

The hot-stove league in national politics is in a tizzy about whether President Obama will move to the center in the next two years. Most in Washington say he will because he must.

I say he won’t because he can’t. You have to be a centrist to really move to the center, and if the last two years prove anything, it is that Obama’s definitely not a centrist.

The yes-he-will crowd has concluded that GOP control of the House forces Obama to make compromises. They point to the income-tax deal that kept rates fixed for two years, even though Obama pledged to raise rates on families earning above $250,000.

In truth, he had no choice. Because Republicans were united and Dems divided, he could either go along with the deal or risk a tax hike on everyone. The risk wasn’t worth the fight.

But few other issues have such immediate consequences, so Obama will be able to pick and choose and use the bully pulpit to declare victory when it suits him. As he said himself, he is “itchin’ for a fight” with the GOP, which is music to the liberal wing of his party.

Of course, rhetorically, he will sometimes suggest he’s a centrist, as he did in the 2008 campaign, but that will be just for show.

His re-election depends on getting just enough independents to believe he’s a centrist while letting lefties know he’s still with them. In other words, he has to fool some of the people all the time.

The hate-crime wave that wasn’t

Did you hear about the surge in hate crimes in New York? Bias against Muslims is the driving force, proving what a horribly victimized minority they are.

Just kidding.

Hate crimes are up 14 percent across the state, but those against Muslims are a tiny fraction. Of the 683 reported to police in 2009, only 11 targeted Muslims. Yes, 11. In 2008, there were eight.

Compare that with the 251 against Jews, or 37 percent of the total. Anti-black crimes were down slightly, to 144, or 21 percent of the total.

The biggest rise was in crimes against gays, from 70 to 107.

Remember those numbers the next time someone, maybe someone in City Hall or the White House, warns against a rising tide of Islamophobia. Use the facts to shut them up.

‘Times’ up, Andy

He’s only just begun, but already Andrew Cuomo is finished. See, he’s lost The New York Times. Setting a new record for instant idiocy, the paper’s editorial page blasted his “rash” promises to cap property taxes and end an income-tax surcharge. “He needs to jettison both tax promises,” the paper warned on Friday. Just one problem: The tax plans are the heart of Cuomo’s reforms to save New York, and many voters backed him because he swears they are key to cutting the size of government. Not that the Times could possibly care about that. They got their corporate welfare and expect ev erybody else to pay for it.