Lucky me: I got to watch the New Fred Neulander's national TV debut.

In a coming-out extravaganza hosted by an unfailingly gracious (if occasionally incredulous) Barbara Walters, the convicted wife-murderer unveiled his latest persona: tragic victim.

Yes, that's right.

The Cherry Hill rabbi, who had his wife slaughtered in their living room so he could keep having sex with a recently widowed radio personality in his office, is innocent.

Those who believe otherwise, including the jury who convicted him and the judge who sentenced him to 30 years minimum, are woefully mistaken.

The whole thing was everyone else's fault, you see.

Killer-for-hire Len Jenoff, whom Neulander befriended out of the (apparently) boundless goodness of his heart, took it upon himself to bludgeon Mrs. Neulander.

"The man," Neulander told Walters on ABC-TV's 20/20, "is a pathological liar."

Elaine Soncini, the widow with whom Neulander was having one of his many affairs, forced herself on him.

"She was looking for a relationship, and I responded."

And the authorities seized upon him.

"They had in advance decided, `That's a murderer.' "

During the interview, Neulander used seemingly forthright but mushily abstract phrases such as "my undeniably ugly behavior."

Apparently, his refurbished public image will be of the postmodern, warts-and-all sort.

"I lost my moral compass," he told Walters.

"I went outside my marriage vows."

"It was sinful."

"Did I act inappropriate? Yes. But it's not an evidence of guilt."

(Neulander has apparently been studying Bill Clinton's All-Purpose Handbook of Weasel Phrases.)

Speaking of things weaselly, unlike the pedantic Fred Neulander of old, the New Fred Neulander is a humble guy.

So humble, he even went so far as to answer four of Walters' questions with "no ma'am."

No ma'am?

Oh please.

Notwithstanding Walters' diva-dom (I myself might have been tempted to address her as "your fabulousness"), Neulander's pseudo-humility didn't wash, didn't parse and didn't play.

He was about as convincing as the Iraqi "information" minister who insisted, hours before the Saddam statues fell, that "infidel" troops were nowhere near Baghdad, and that, even if the heathens somehow had gotten into the city, they were too busy committing suicide en masse to fight.

Meanwhile, rather than assuming a new title (disinformation minister comes to mind), the New Fred Neulander wishes to retain his old honorific.

"One doesn't defrock a rabbi," he told Walters.

Or change a leopard's spots, either.