The Year’s Most Disgusting Book

The world mostly responded to Kerik’s 2013 protestations with a half-disgusted shiver (even Lauer seemed anxious to creep sideways away from Kerik during his interview), but that didn’t cool Kerik’s ardor for bringing America the ugly truth about incarceration.

The public must be informed! And by a formerly-credible white person! And so we get this latest work, a book-length recitation of the same ideas Kerik sent to the (probably) incredulous Eric Holder back in 2011.

Jailer to Jailed is a revolting work, even by the incredibly low standards of the modern memoir. It makes Don’t Hassle the Hoff read like Remembrance of Things Past.

This swindling, tax-evading, philandering slimeball, whose reptilian greed and ambition very nearly put the entire country in mortal danger (imagine the possibilities of someone with so much blackmail material in his past being put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security) actually has the gall to start off one of the early chapters by announcing to the reader what a wonderful, patriotic person he is:

I’ve been called arrogant, obnoxious and defiant by my critics. But I’m also fair, generous and sentimental, particularly when it comes to matters of the heart, my family, my wife and children, and my country…

The hallmark of any good memoir is honesty, and this book is totally devoid of it. A good book by Bernie Kerik would have been a no-holds barred account of the Sopranos-style corruption that Kerik knew all about from the inside, getting mob-connected Jersey contractors to renovate his Riverdale co-op and pay nine grand a month in rent. Or he could have provided fascinating insights into the inner workings of the Giuliani administration, or Iraq under L. Paul Bremer, the Republican Party, the defense contracting community, etc.

Instead, Jailer to Jailed spends most of its pages either pushing Kerik’s saccharine observations about the unforgiving nature of the prison system, or hyping Kerik’s pre-prison career accomplishments.

There’s even a whole chapter about how awesome and prisoner-friendly Rikers Island became under his management, how he spread the word that just because someone is a suspect or a prisoner, you shouldn’t “treat them like shit.” Not only that, he worked hard to bring some feng shui to America’s biggest jail:

We cleaned up Rikers and the other city jails, painting over the graffiti, much of it gang-related, putting in more lights and fans… I introduced crisper uniforms, lending a paramilitary pride to the officers…

It’s a con job. One of the most enthusiastic jailers in recent memory is trying to use some obvious truths about the insane overreach of America’s urban police system (a system he helped create) as currency to buy his way back to public life. And if people aren’t careful, it’ll work, and Bernie Kerik will end up being put in charge of some commission to rehabilitate America’s prisons, and in short order he’ll have someone else renovating his next co-op.

Gordon Liddy was strong enough for jail and strong enough to look himself in the mirror, which is why his book was so great. Bernie Kerik fails both tests. As commissioner he doled out about a million years in prison to (mostly poor) New Yorkers. but he himself couldn’t do four without running to weep on Matt Lauer’s shoulder. And a thousand lies later, he still wants to be taken seriously as a public voice. What a joke. Take your medicine and be quiet.