NEWS: Loathsome Book Publisher Fired

CULTURE: Loathsome Book Publisher Fired

Judith Regan, the Queen Bitch of HarperCollins book imprint ReganBooks, was unceremoniously canned last week. The announcement that the world's most infamous book publisher was eligible for unemployment benefits was released on Friday.

According to news reports, Regan's dismissal was the result of an alleged anti-semitic comment. However, it's safe to assume the fallout from her latest and most notorious book and television project, If I Did It by former NFL star and alleged murderer Orenthal James Simpson factored into the dismissal as well.

The super-creepy, universally reviled book and related Fox News interview special wasn't the first time Regan's first brush with scandal. Usually, though, she's the one exploiting it.

For most of her career as a book publisher, Regan specialized in putting America's worst obsessions to print. As HarperCollins executive editor David Hirshey once said, there wouldn't be a Paris Hilton autobiography if it weren't for Regan. Without Regan, Scott Peterson's mistress and Osama Bin Laden's niece likewise would have gone unpublished.

In 2004, Regan was involved in a sex scandal when information about her affair with married former New York City police chief and onetime Homeland Security Secretary nominee Bernie Kerik was revealed. She started fucking him while he wrote his book The Last Son, which was printed under Regan's imprint. During their year-long affair, Regan met Kerik for trysts at an apartment donated for post-9/11 recovery efforts. She also paid Kerik $75,000 to write an 11-sentence long introduction for a charity book about 9/11 families.

However, Regan's ability to publish gazillion-copy sellers always kept her from facing serious repercussions. The year the Kerik scandal was revealed, the ReganBooks release How to Make Love Like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson spent six weeks on the New York Times best sellers list. Cashing in on O.J., though, was the unforgivable sin.

Regan's lawyer declared "war" on HarperCollins parent company, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Considering Regan's reputation—Vanity Fair called her a "foul-mouthed tyrant" in a 2005 profile—it's going to be bloody.

Interesting. I do have to admit that its a tad disappointing. Who else publishes such good stuff.

Every once and a while karma seems to come through, I hope the bitch dies penniless.

Sweet. Now maybe we'll have less books written by celebrities that no one cared to hear more about anyway.

That's the thing, the books sold. So there are quite a few "no one"s that were interested in what she was publishing.

While I don't really find the premise of this latest story of OJ all that interesting - I don't really have moral objections to it either.

A significant chunk of my library would not exist if not for ReganBooks. Judith Regan is like Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men--she may be a fucking asshole, but you want her to be a fucking asshole; you need her to be a fucking asshole.