A Very Important Post About.... Alan Dershowitz's Hurt Feelings
Another year, another silly Dershowitz complaint about Martha's Vineyard
There are three certainties in 21st-century America: death, taxes, and Alan Dershowitz loudly complaining about how everyone on Martha’s Vineyard is mean to him.
Dershowitz’s laments on this point have been an annual rite of summer for what seems like the past decade. Here’s the latest, according the Vineyard Gazette’s Ethan Gander:
Alan Dershowitz, a seasonal Chilmark resident and prominent attorney known for his controversial clients, is threatening litigation after he was denied a half dozen pierogi at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market this week.
A Harvard Law professor famous for his public outcries of being socially ostracized on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Dershowitz issued the threat and laid out his claims of discrimination at the summer market in a 30-minute video posted on Youtube Wednesday.
He alleged that he tried to order the dumplings at Good Pierogi during the weekly Wednesday market, before the person at the stand refused to do business with him due to Mr. Dershowitz’s politics.
“He said at one point he didn’t like the people I defended,” said Mr. Dershowitz, who has represented O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. “A lot of people don’t like the people I’ve represented, but they don’t refuse to serve me. And I said ‘That was pure McCarthyism.’”….
Police were called around 10 a.m. to assist with the situation. According to a statement from West Tisbury police, Mr. Dershowitz expressed displeasure with the operators of the pierogi tent, an officer de-escalated the situation, and everyone went their separate ways….
This is not Mr. Dershowitz’s first kerfuffle on the Island. He allegedly got into a tiff with comedian Larry David on the porch of the Chilmark General Store, and waged a public campaign against the Chilmark library and others for not inviting him to talk about his work.
“I’ve been on the Island now 50 years,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place that is as intolerant as Martha’s Vineyard.”
The MV Times’ Sam Houghton adds:
According to witnesses, Dershowitz referred to the vendor as a bigot and that others in line should not purchase the product as a result. Dershowitz, in his comments to The Times, said that he was not making a disturbance but was informing shoppers that he was refused service…..
Dershowitz also said that his religious rights could have been infringed on because of his stance as an ardent Zionist. In a video on his YouTube channel posted Wednesday, Dershowitz said that his Zionism is part of his Judaism, so could be considered not selling to him over his religious belief or ethnicity.
You can watch the video here of the West Tisbury policeman demonstrating superhuman levels of patience with Dershowitz after he could not procure his pierogis.
There are many levels of silliness embedded in this story, including evidence that Dershowitz’s self-perception about his standing on Martha’s Vineyard might be juuuuust a wee bit detached from reality. Above The Law’s Joe Patrice asks, “at this point, we need to consider the possibility that complaining about Martha’s Vineyard is just Dershowitz’s kink.”
It’s not just a possibility, it’s the most likely explanation. The moment Dershowitz started kvetching about being denied pierogi, the mockery of his complaint was an inevitability. So why complain in the first place?!
Dershowitz’s real problem is the dramatic decline in his social standing in a vacation locale where he used to be a celebrity. And to be clear, the social decline is not going from beloved to despised; it’s going from being known to being mostly ignored.
My extended family has owned a house on Martha’s Vineyard for more than 20 years. I have gone to many a book talk there, It’s the perfect place for authors to give summer book talks, because it’s both a pretty invested audience of readers as well as a lovely place to spend a few days. There is nothing sadder, however, than going there to give a book talk and no one being terribly interested. And I would posit that this happened to Dershowitz some time ago and he has never recovered from it.
At some point irrelevance comes for us all. Sure, the pierogi guy refused to sell a pierogi to Dershowitz. I strongly suspect that this secretly delighted Dersh, however, because it meant someone knew who he was. Imagine being a minor celebrity going to the same vacation locale for 50 years and reaching the point where one’s social capital has disintegrated into nothingness. That is Dershowitz’s pathetic torment every summer day on an otherwise lovely resort island.
Dershowitz wants to label this unconstitutional, or anti-Semitic, or whatever gets him attention at this point. But it is not illegal for friends to unfriend, or for acquaintances to un-acquaint themselves. In his heart of hearts, Alan Dershowitz must know this. He just can’t cope with it.
One could view Dershowitz’s obsession with his status on Martha’s Vineyard as a synecdoche of how MAGA supporters feel about their status in America. But honestly, I think that might be stretching things too far. This story is really about how pathetic one can look when one takes themselves too seriously.
Omg hilarious. Dersh was considered the premier criminal law guy at HLS for 1Ls when I went there just as Charles Fried was the contracts guy, Larry Tribe was the con law guy, and Arthur Miller was the civil procedure big cheese. Everyone wanted these professors. Notably I got none of them for my 1L year in 1983-84.
What a fall from grace for him.
I do find it hideous that he is trying to make this about his Zionism though. Because he wants to escalate this to a case about freedom of religion. In any event no public action is implicated here so probably no case could be made—unless he goes after the town for allowing the market to discriminate based on religion—but still it’s so unnecessary and disingenuous when he surely knows that folks don’t like him.
That old man has no idea what McCarthyism is. And he lived through it.