Matt Taibbi: The Year's Most Disgusting Book (Bernie Kerik's "bleeding-heart prison memoir")

[Miles Archer]

The Year's Most Disgusting Book
Former top cop Bernard Kerik's bleeding-heart prison memoir is a Matterhorn of hypocrisy
By Matt Taibbi April 7, 2015



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-years-most-disgusting-book-20150407

Enter Bernie Kerik, who with this month's publication of Holy Shit: I Was Wrong About Everything For Like Thirty Straight Years (it's actually called From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey From Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #8488-054) will now go down as the most fugazi tough guy in the history of New York.

Kerik, who throughout his public life affected the look of a preposterous caricature of a political strongman, with a shaved-skull-and-mustache combo that came across as a goofball mix of Mussolini and Anton LaVey, was the guy we sent to rebuild the police forces in occupied Iraq. The Iraqis must have thought we were nuts. It's a surprise he didn't force the IPs to wear leather jerkins.

When he returned, George Bush nominated him to head the Homeland Security department. But Kerik suddenly withdrew from consideration under an avalanche of corruption charges.

It was the usual stuff for a corrupt city hack – ties to organized crime, contractors working on the house in exchange for handouts, affairs, tax evasion, etc. Kerik denied it all, vowing to "battle" the accusations the way he'd fought the terrorists on 9/11.