42 Comments
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

LMAO. If Dershowitz had been doing a bit during the Chotiner interview and decided to deliberately sound like the biggest entitled and arrogant crybaby possible, he couldn’t have nailed that persona more accurately.

It’s been said many times, but when Isaac Chotiner calls you for an interview, you don’t just decline the interview and leave it at that. You change your name, have plastic surgery, and move off the grid. It’s the only way to be sure, lol.

Expand full comment

As I was finishing the interview, I could only think this was parody & the Andy Borowitz's byline had been swapped out. This is a level of self-delusion that seriously questions one's fitness to practice law, both in terms of acuity as well as ethics. This is a level of self-delusion that only a man who cavorts with child rapists can have while engaging with the outside world.

I get the idea that there's more to this interview & Chotiner ended thinking, "Fuck me, if this douche-tube goes on any longer I'm going to get served with a subpoena as a witness."

Expand full comment

And yet, doesn’t living the highly driven life require no small amount of self-blindness?

Expand full comment

Usually Chotiner's a little more subtle in his mockery of the victim. This time, it's like he knew he didn't even have to try.

Expand full comment

Indeed. Dershowitz comes off like a character right out of Moliere (or Wilde or Dickens), a bourgeois gentilhomme victimized because of his blameless wonderfulness, matched only by his modesty. (At one point he actually pretends to forget the exact title of the book he wrote that caused the bullies to beat up its reader on the beach.) He's his own satirist.

Expand full comment

"Gentle reader, I had her transported across state lines"

Expand full comment

The phrase that launched a thousand zips...

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Ah, Chotiner interviewing Dersh. It’s everything you imagine it to be. The whining, the self-aggrandizement and the gentle questioning that leads Dersh into the big reveal: he was defending the Constitution, not Trump, when he testified at the second impeachment trial! And now Larry David thinks he’s a piece of shit, that same Larry David who in real life is just like the character he plays on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Truly Dersh is the most abused person in Nantucket (insert your own limerick here).

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Chotiner is deadly. As delightful a read as the interview was, he must have felt as if Dersh was making it too easy for him and it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

My favorite part was the reference to the guy beat up for reading Dersh's book. Of course it's well known that the Vineyard is full of roving bands of thugs in polo shirts and docksiders, with hair trigger tempers that are inflamed by provocative authors. So really, by flagrantly reading the book the guy was asking for it: run up get done up.

Expand full comment

The scenario Dershowitz painted on the beach was lifted straight from old Charles Atlas "90 lb. weakling" ads in comic books.

Expand full comment

“I asked why was that called for, and I was told that it’s because his political view point and mine differ.”

That's some totally realistic dialogue, right there.

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"run up get done up"

What a delightful phrase – never before heard by this guy's ears.

2 marks!

Expand full comment
author

Isn't it?

Expand full comment

On Nantucket did Dershowitz fail,

His reputation a beached dead whale

All rotting and bloated

'Cause to Trump he's devoted.

Now he's cancelled and oh! hear him wail!

Expand full comment

A++++

Expand full comment

Al Dershowitz lit out on the sound

Said "Boys, I'm for Martha's bound"

But the Vineyard librarian

Protested, contrarian

At Nantucket he turned the boat 'round

Expand full comment

It's a limerick with the word "Nantucket" that's safe for the whole family!

Expand full comment

Not that my family gives a fu...uhm...rat's patoot...

Expand full comment
author
Jul 20, 2022·edited Jul 20, 2022Author

Make some trims for scansion and it's perfect!

Expand full comment

As my editors through the years can attest, I am definitely NOT averse to being edited!

Expand full comment

Awesome.

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022·edited Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

That's some dark shit right there-

Great stuff Roy!

Whenever I see anyone in a relaxed candid photo with Jeff Epstein I assume they just got a handjob from a 13 year old.

Expand full comment

Come on! He kept his underwear on the whole time!

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022·edited Jul 20, 2022

on the side of the bed?

on the nearest lamppost?

on loan?

on call?

on again, off again?

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

He should just accept his pre-printed subpoena in advance, and beat the usual "Trump lawyer" rush. (Is there a Four Seasons Landscaping on Martha's Vineyard?)

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Yup. Consists of "Pour the sand here".

Expand full comment

Anent my proposal for further inflection upon "pearl-clutching," I would like to go one step further to add "cancelcultured-pearl-clutching."

Doesn't really roll of the tongue but it does ROFL...

Expand full comment

Alright, alright – 2 bloody marks!

Expand full comment
Jul 20, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I was expecting Trump to try to get Isaac Chotiner's address from Dershowitz, in case maybe he had talent for the stuff his dad used to do, you know it's genetic with some of those people?

I can really see Trump doing that: a positive quality of his—bound-up very tightly with his negative ones—is that his lack of understanding of limits lets him come-up with ideas no-one else could or would, usually for very good reasons, but.

Expand full comment

That's true, "his lack of understanding of limits" which comes from the fact that he's 76 and he's never once had any limit of any kind placed on him [glares at Merrick Garland].

Expand full comment

I came up with most of those ideas in 3rd grade, and immediately thought better of them.

Expand full comment

In his second administration, the first thing Trump will do is get the mechanisms of his power fixed.

He didn't pay any attention to the levers of power early enough in his first administration. He rather naively assumed that since every political appointee in the executive branch serves at his pleasure, they actually would hop to if he needed them to follow orders. He didn't actually need them to do anything for him until 11/4/20, because he has no abiding interest in public policy, but by that time that he needed them to keep him in office, it was too late. He was already a lame duck, and there was not going to be any hopping to across any Rubicon for the losing cause of a lame duck.

He learned from that experience, and we can expect that he will fix the levers of presidential power from day one if he is allowed back in the office. He won't imagine that he has the luxury of worrying at all about getting the damn bubbler fixed until after he's got all his law enforcement, intelligence, and military assets fixed to work properly at keeping him in power no matter what they have to do to combat whatever fraud the D/RINO/Deep State conspiracy might throw at him.

Expand full comment

" there was not going to be any hopping to across any Rubicon for the losing cause of a lame duck"

Exactimundo. Hence Pence.

Expand full comment

Well, that's a scary thought, a Justice Department that's Jeffrey Clarks all the way down.

Expand full comment

To quote Machiavelli, "oh, yeah". When he entered the Oval Office, Trump considered himself a "player" on the global stage, but I'd bet everything in my pocket he was a bit intimidated by what he'd lucked into, along with assuming that as CEO of America his whim would be law. He's not making that mistake again. We'll be longing for the quiet dignity of the Mooch and Big Dick Toilet Salesman.

Expand full comment

I've heard of Mooch, but I'm afraid to ask about Big Dick Toilet Salesman and there's NO WAY I'm Googling it.

Expand full comment

I like how your portrayal of Trump updates to include the latest Jan. 6 Committee revelations. "These people will kill for me, so you'd better stay on my good side or they'll kill you" is a pretty fair summary of the Trump we got from Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony.

Expand full comment

There are texts between people in the White House discussing who gets what roles in the Trump dictatorship. Someone wanted to purge the Army. Someone wanted to be in charge of the internment camps. People discussed firing squads and who would be shot first.

Now, I haven't seen these texts. I don't have the certainty of having read them personally. But I have no doubt they exist b/c that was all in the actual f'ing plan from at least year 2.

Expand full comment

Not that this wasn't fun, but I believe Trump summers at Bedminster, his golf course in NJ. He has also pissed off a bunch of 9/11 families by hosting a Saudi-backed LIV golf tour event at Bedminster. His response to criticism is to tell the players to take the money, now.

Expand full comment

Wow, if you go by number of comments, we rather stress than enjoy the power of cheap laughs.

Or maybe we have a huge number of secret Dersh lovers here…

Expand full comment