An Absolutely Microscopic Violin for Alan Dershowitz
A recent op-ed in The Hill complaining about his treatment on Martha's Vineyard isn't earning Dershowitz any friends.
Portrait by Chris Buck for “The World v. Alan Dershowitz“
Alan Dershowitz is having a bad one.
The famed lawyer, camera-addicted talking head, and defender/advisor to President Donald Trump had what can only be described as a meltdown in an op-ed for the news site The Hill last week, lamenting a new sign of the collapsing republic.
What decline of civilization might the Dersh be referring to when he warns of a new “McCarthyism” in our midst?
People on Martha’s Vineyard aren’t inviting him to dinner parties anymore. Or even cocktail parties. Worse yet, he’s forced to hear about what’s said at these cocktail parties that he’s not invited to—whether they be in Chilmark or Edgartown or even Chappaquiddick maybe—and people are saying mean things about him. He’s been “shunned,” he says, for having defended the ” civil liberties” of the Commander-in-Chief.
In his piece, Dershowitz notes that he does not consider himself a Trump supporter and that he has in fact opposed some of the president’s more heinous policies. But that has apparently not kept his peers on the Vineyard from staying as far away from him as possible. This, in Dershowitz’s telling, should give us all pause.
“Either you are for Trump or against him, and that is all some people need to know to make judgments about you. I know this because I have experienced this firsthand on Martha’s Vineyard,” he writes. “For them, it is enough that what I have said about the Constitution might help Trump. So they are shunning me and trying to ban me from their social life on Martha’s Vineyard.”
Somebody start a GoFundMe. In lieu of gifts this year, send me a Facebook birthday donation for our friend, the TV lawyer. I’m sobbing for Alan Dershowitz.
His laments about the Vineyard social scene came as part of an argument against calls from Maxine Waters and others to confront, harass, and otherwise make uncomfortable the people responsible for carrying out Trump’s immigration policy, or lying for him in public. Why won’t people just be nice to them? the Dershowitzes of the world ask. Why don’t they wanna hang out?
What kind of world do we live in when Alan Dershowitz gets side eyes at Martha’s Vineyard and Sarah Sanders is politely asked to leave a Red Hen restaurant? The end of civility. The end of decency. The end of righteous outrage. Oh, look another baby ripped from his parents…
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) July 2, 2018
wow, just received this exclusive photograph of alan dershowitz in the midst of composing his column for the hill pic.twitter.com/zSz3vHW6Of
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 3, 2018
VINEYARD WHINES
— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) July 2, 2018
when Alan Dershowitz arrives at the Vineyard all the little whales on people’s shorts pointedly turn in the other direction
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) July 3, 2018
