Alan Dershowitz Kvetches About Martha’s Vineyard — And The Internet Laughs At Him

Alan Dershowitz. Image by getty images

By PJ Grisar July 3, 2018

Alan Dershowitz had a thing or two to say about liberals pestering Trump administration officials. At least that’s what he claimed he was talking about.

The bulk of the legal eagle’s latest oped is really more about how Dershowitz’s friends in Martha’s Vineyard are “shunning” him for his support of Trump on Fox News and elsewhere.

He even went so far as to compare his ill treatment with McCarthyism.

The internet had a field day.

Slate’s Matthew Dessem re-imagined the kvetch-sesh in the style of William Earnest Henley’s poem “Invictus” with such choice lines as:

“When invitations don’t arrive/I have not winced or cried aloud./Watching my social prospects dive,/My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

and

“Beyond the ferry to Oak Bluffs/Loom lonely days and lonely nights,/Because when things start getting tough,/I call my friends McCarthyites.”

New York Times opinion writer Wajahat Ali added some savage perspective.

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

The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri made a sartorial crack in the vein of the Vineyard Vines clothing brand.

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

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes thought it was a gag at first.

HAHAHAHA. I thought the Dershowitz op-ed about being shunned on Martha’s Vineyard was some weird twitter meme and NOT AN ACTUAL COLUMN HE WROTE DOWN AND PUBLISHED.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 2, 2018

Few people took Dershowitz’s side. So the semi-retired Harvard Law prof served as his own defense against the Twitter shamers.

(1/2) I’m reveling not whining. I’m proud of taking an unpopular, principled position that gets me shunned by partisan zealots. It’s not about me. I couldn’t care less about being shunned by such people. It’s about their unwillingness to engage in dialogue.

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) July 3, 2018

(2/2) It’s bad enough when college students demand trigger warnings and safe spaces to avoid hearing views with which they disagree. But it’s worse when it comes from professors and media people. It’s a dangerous sign of the times.

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) July 3, 2018

The irony of course is, there don’t seem to be many safe spaces left for Dershowitz.

PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.

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