Not Canceling Alan Dershowitz Is The New Canceling Alan Dershowitz!
Like an animal seeks water, the Dersh seeks someone to listen to him complain about being cancelled.
Is not cancelling Alan Dershowitz the new canceling Alan Dershowitz? Only The Atlantic could dare to ask this question.
As we all know, Dershowitz getting cancelled on his longtime summer home of Martha’s Vineyard is a long-running saga, a seasonal bacchanal as American as Fourth of July fireworks, cookouts, property disputes, and yelling at tourists to slow the fuck down, this is the Vineyard, not I-95.
But things have been quiet on the Dersh’s Martha’s Vineyard front this summer. There have been no reports of empty social calendars or antisemitic pierogis violating his civil rights. No stories of the island library not booking him to speak. No sad Page Six items about Hollywood celebrities yelling at Dersh in public and motivating him to rip off his novelty patriotic T-shirt so everyone could see the novelty patriotic T-shirt he was wearing under the first one.
Has Dersh calmed down, or does he simply not have a book to sell this year?
The Atlantic sent the writer Mark Leibovitch to ask. What he found was a cantankerous old man reborn in the aura of all the new friends he has quietly made on the Vineyard’s right flank. But quietly. He doesn’t mention any names, presumably because none of them want to get cancelled for not cancelling Alan Dershowitz:
He is “treated very well” even in the more heavily trafficked Vineyard towns on the other side of the island. “In Edgartown and even Oak Bluffs, the African American community, I’m treated very well,” he said. “It’s all Chilmark. And it’s all Jewish, anti-Zionist.”
Edgartown and Oak Bluffs are on the right literally, as in the eastern side of the island. Chilmark is on the western side. Literally the left! And we all know how the Left feels about Alan Dershowitz, which is why Chilmark hates him. Why, he sat on the porch of the General Store as he has done every summer for decades while Leibovitch interviewed him, and not one person came by to yell at him, that’s how much everyone in town hates him.
He said that he does not lack social options. He has become very active in a Vineyard Chabad that he helped start. He told me at one point about all of the new friends he’s made. “Most of them are more supportive of Israel than the other group was,” he said. “And I often ask myself, How did I allow myself to become part of that other group?”
Dunno? Were you less of an asshole when Larry David still spoke to you?
Speaking of Larry David, that famous confrontation is still charring Dersh’s nads. Dersh claims that David still “screams and yells” when they see each other. David, on the other hand, sounds as if he has barely given it a thought, telling Leibovitch, “I don’t know why he’s still thinking and talking about me.”
Not to say that everything is peaches and cream for Dershowitz! He claims former friends are trying to get him banned from the Chilmark Tavern, one of his favorite restaurants on the island. (Asked about this, the reader can practically hear the Tavern’s owner rolling her eyes when she declines to talk about him.)
And the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival that always allegedly used to ask him to speak? It refuses to book him because “they censor anybody they disagree with.” They used to ask him all the time to talk about whatever book he had coming out!
Oh, also, he does have a new book coming out in September. This one is called Why I Quit the Dems: And So Should You! Confessions of a Reluctant Republican. We can’t believe nobody on Martha’s Vineyard is interested in spending a couple of hours of their precious time listening to Alan Dershowitz repeat all the gripes he’s been throwing out in interviews for the last decade, which he has now apparently written down in book shape.
For what it’s worth, the head of the book festival denies she is discriminating against Alan Dershowitz, which is just what a book festival head discriminating against Alan Dershowitz would say!
There was no word from Dersh on what happened to the lawsuit he claimed he was filing against the pierogi vendor who didn’t want his business, so we’re going to assume it got laughed out of court.
The rest of it is the usual blah blah blah about how Dersh didn’t get any erotic massages on Epstein Island. But he did once get a shoulder-and-neck rub from an older female masseuse at Epstein’s house in Palm Beach but it was obviously nothing, he has never gotten an erotic massage from anyone, not even his wife. So there.
Alan Dershowitz Suing Martha’s Vineyard Farmer's Market Vendor For Tortious Withholding Of Dumpling
Some variation of “I have never been unfaithful to my wife” is a staple of Dersh’s Epstein denials, but this one was a little more specific than anyone should be exposed to. It’s like the highly radioactive uranium of information shared by Alan Dershowitz.
There is a lot more about Dersh and his long, sad, lion-in-winter existence on Martha’s Vineyard where people ignore him simply because of things he has said and choices he has made.
Somehow, Alan Dershowitz has carved out a life in that liminal space between cancelled and not cancelled.
And we are doomed to get one story about this ongoing saga every summer until the end of time.
Alan Dershowitz would hate it if you donated to help us outlive him.
If a dweeb fails to find friendship and no one is around to care, is it still Nantucket Sound?
Honestly, Dersh has turned into nothing more than a punchline searching desperately for a joke.