5 Entertaining Moments from Alan Dershowitz’s Grievance-Ridden New Yorker Interview
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Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker has gained a well-deserved reputation as a keen interviewer who elicits honest, if not unwitting responses from his subjects. In his latest conversation, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz got the Chotiner treatment.
Dershowitz was a lawyer for Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial after having been an ardent critic of the Mueller investigation into the former president. In 2018 he complained those criticisms had gotten him shunned by friends and acquaintances on posh Martha’s Vineyard. Predictably, he was roundly roasted.
Last year, he claimed Larry David screamed at him on the island. Dershowitz said the Curb Your Enthusiasm star told him, “You’re disgusting,” citing Dershowitz’s coziness with the Trump administration.
In The New Yorker interview, the lawyer reiterated many of his prior complaints and discussed David in a grievance-laden exchange with Chotiner.
Here are five of the more entertaining parts of the interview.
Chotiner sarcastically compares Dershowitz to The Beatles after the law professor says he was the “most popular speaker” at the library in Chilmark, Massachusetts – population 917.
DERSHOWITZ: I was the most popular speaker in the Chilmark Library series.
CHOTINER: I can imagine.
DERSHOWITZ Every year, they would have an overflow crowd to hear me speak about whatever book I was writing, or whatever I was doing. But suddenly, after I represented the Constitution on behalf of President Trump, the library found excuses for never having me. Their first excuse was that my crowds were too big. So I said, “Well, why don’t you limit the crowds?” They said, “Oh, we hadn’t thought of that.”
CHOTINER: Can you imagine if Ed Sullivan had done that with the Beatles? It’s a ridiculous excuse.
DERSHOWITZ: Yeah, of course. So I’ve been cancelled, basically, by the Chilmark Library.
Dershowitz relays an anecdote from a letter he received from a guy claiming to have been beaten up for reading Dershowitz’s book.
CHOTINER: For people who haven’t read it, can you describe it? The guy’s reading the book, and then a group of thugs—
DERSHOWITZ: Well, I don’t know if they were thugs. I don’t even know whether they were left or right people. The book he was reading is called “The Case for Liberalism in an Age of” . . . whatever. I’ll get you the exact title. It was “The Case for Liberalism.” It wasn’t the most recent book. The people either didn’t like the title or, more likely, didn’t like me, because he was beaten up only after he said he has admiration for the author and he wanted to read what I wanted to write. So he got beaten up.
Dershowitz says, “Now if you ask a hundred people,” Chotiner interrupts and asks, “You want me to do that now…?”
DERSHOWITZ: The other day there was a fund-raiser event on the Vineyard sponsored by Democratic Jews. The Jewish Democrats is the name of the organization, the Jewish Democrats. Now, if you ask a hundred people to name the five most well-known Jewish Democrats on Martha’s Vineyard . . .
CHOTINER: You want me to do that now, or are you saying hypothetically?
DERSHOWITZ: No, hypothetically. Many would say I was one of them. I was essentially told not to come to this event. Either I wasn’t Jewish enough, or I wasn’t Democratic enough. But it reflects what’s going on between the Democratic Party and Jews. The Democratic Party is losing Jewish support, particularly among the pro-Israel people. So I was cancelled from that event as well.
Dershowitz recalls the time Larry David yelled at him at a store.
CHOTINER: Is it true that Larry David chewed you out?
DERSHOWITZ: He did, yeah. What happened is—it’s interesting because I was having lunch with a very radical lawyer who loves me. I mean, he disagrees with me. We argue all the time, but he is not part of the Chilmark crowd. So I was having lunch with him and then a number of other people were there. Suddenly, Larry David walks in to buy some groceries. I say, “Hey. Hi, Larry,” and he turns away, and he just walks away. I say, “Larry, can’t we at least talk?” He said, “No. You’re disgusting.”
Chotiner asks Dershowitz if he can still watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. Dershowitz says “No” because he now knows the “Larry David” he plays in the show is the same Larry David in real life.
CHOTINER: Can you even watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm” anymore?
DERSHOWITZ: No. Because I know that the Larry David that’s in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is not a fictional character. He’s the real Larry David.
CHOTINER: Wow.
DERSHOWITZ: If you know that he’s the real Larry David, that curmudgeon, the nasty guy—
CHOTINER: It kills it.
DERSHOWITZ: It kills it. Yeah.
That’s how the interview ends.
