Melville House Books

The tawdry affair between Judith Regan and Bernard Kerik, conducted in an apartment overlooking Ground Zero, continued to make headlines around the world yesterday. Despite issuing a press release about one of her new book as if it were an act of defiance—putting herself in the first sentence of the release, which was for a book related to the sensational Scott Peterson murder trial—Regan was also described as harried and harassed in another New York Post commentary by Andrea Peyser. In a continuation of her Tuesday column, Peyser says that after the breakup of the relationship, “Kerik snapped” and stalked Regan and her children. But, Peyser says, a spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners, where Kerik is a partner (other New York newspapers refer to the company as Guiliani-Kerik), calls the stalking charges “outrageous.” Meanwhile, a day after right-wingers such as Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the story, commentators from the far left chimed in, too. Says a commentary at the World Socialist Web Site by Bill Van Auken, “That Kerik had affairs is not the issue, except perhaps in the context of the hypocritical ‘moral values’ campaign waged by his political benefactors in the Republican Party. What is important is Kerik’s gross and brutal abuse of power.” And the story is continuing to play out around the globe, as in an India Daily story: “The . . . affair with top publisher Judith Regan included trysts in an apartment first used by exhausted rescuers after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.