Back in 2004, when Queen Bee wannabe Hillary Rodham didn't even know that she didn't know what she knows now, a more sympathetic New Yorker self-published a book called If I Knew Then... And? Turns out that Long Island Ophelia Amy Fisher would have still fallen head over shotgun for that prime rib/subprime mortgage of a man Bill Cli Joey Buttafuoco, if only for the chance to join the Flavor Flav/Lauren Conrad level of the Pantheon of Human Dignity. So reports today's Post, which, in an "exclusive," seems to have acquired tapes of The Insider's upcoming four-night so-inside-it's-like-a-PET-scan series on Amy and Joey's much talked-about steak-house canoodling last week. Said tape was apparently played in a room for a monkey that can transcribe and voilà: "'I love it, so I would do it," Fisher said of the idea of a reality-TV show. "We have so much fun. He's so funny. People don't know that.'"

Funny and...such a good catch! Which is to say, people also don't know how rich and famous J. Butta truly is:

"Stunt for what?" Buttafuoco fumed during the TV interview. "I could walk out of my home in California and everybody follows. I could be in Hollywood, I could be in Vegas, and it's going to happen."

He said it was not about the money - well, not all about the money.

"I don't need the money," he declared. "I'm really OK emotionally, physically and financially. But if the money comes along with the reality show that they're talking about, fine. I think we'll have an incredible show. It will be a wild show."

This is no hyperbole; one suspects that that The Real Just Shoot Me will get viewers closer to the entirety of its principals' inner lives than any reality show before it:

"I enjoy talking to Amy; I really do," Buttafuoco said. "I like being friends with Amy."

Fisher said the date had been a long time coming.

"We started talking a few years ago," she said. "He called to apologize, and he kept calling and calling."

Buttafuoco said, "She kept hanging up and hanging up. The last time we tried to make something happen, the last time we spoke, I was a really big ass and off the hook with it, so I wanted to apologize to her.

"A year ago I was really angry. I had a medical situation, and I was on heavy meds. I needed to release that part of my past and have some closure on it."

I can't help but fear, however, that Joey may get taken advantage of again. After all, based on her impromptu demographic analysis, Fisher scores at least a 25 or 30 on the standard HMTBTJZCTPP-TV (How Many Times Better Than Jeff Zucker Can This Person Program TV) Scale:

Fisher told the TV show, "We know we're unconventional and a lot of people think it's sick and strange. We're very hesitant about what people think. We care about what people think. We're nice people. We're a lot of fun."

She added: "We're going to start off slower than we did last time - although not too slow..."

America needs a good love story, Fisher claims - and so what if they're sharing their relationship with the world?

Oh, Amy, how we love thee! Not since Sarah Silverman fashioned Jimmy Kimmel (2003) out of tube socks, snot, and ressentiment for the Venice Biennale has feminist installation art done so much with so little.

Joey and Amy Get Mushy [NYP]