RUDY'S MOOK CONTINUES TO PROVIDE MAXIMUM ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

The New York Daily News reports more Bernie fun:

Bernard Kerik has one more legal problem on his hands.

The scandal-tainted former police commissioner is being sued for allegedly stiffing a law firm on a $202,384.04 tab, after its lawyers helped keep him out of jail.

The lawsuit by Fulbright & Jaworski comes as Kerik faces a possible federal indictment on charges of bribery and tax fraud....

And he tried to pay off his personal legal bills from his business account -- not a smooth move:

The suit alleges that Kerik tried to pay off some of his debt last month, by mailing a $10,000 check with funds drawn from The Kerik Group, his Manhattan consulting firm.

"The Kerik Group, LLC was never a client of Fulbright," the lawsuit says....

Ah, but it's just one of those unfortunate things:

In [an] email, [attorney Chad ] Seigel claimed that Kerik had been overbilled by Fulbright & Jaworski, and that he would have hired a cheaper lawyer had he been aware of his bill.

Yeah -- I woulda hired one of those guys I saw on late-night TV! Those guys look real smart! And cheap, too!

*****

OK, this is fun, and the fun from watching Kerik probably won't end anytime soon.

But the News says that Kerik "continues to be a drag on former boss Rudy Giuliani's presidential hopes." The Smoking Gun (which broke the story) calls Kerik an "albatross around presidential aspirant Rudolph Giuliani's neck."

Really?

I mean, I hope so -- but do you see any negative impact on the Giuliani campaign? Has anyone seen any story in which a voter mentioned Kerik as a reason not to vote for Giuliani?

I'm afraid Giuliani has established an archetype of himself in the primitive regions of voters' brains, and in that archetype he doesn't have subordinates and associates and cronies -- he's just a lone knight facing down dark forces. So the Kerik story doesn't stick to him -- he's the lone archetypal hero, living apart from the everyday world and its sleaze. I think if Democrats (or his Republican opponents) want to beat him, they're going to have to cut him down to size, and to do that, they're going to need to change his image to that of a normal venal human being.