What did Dershowitz ever do to be so lucky?
It was the middle of the night when one of our better-known pros, clad only in a T-shirt, stepped outside his hotel room and heard the chilling sound of a door slamming shut behind him, locking him in the hallway.
“I didn’t know where to turn,” he confided years later. “I didn’t know which rooms my teammates had so I had no place to hide. And then all of a sudden the elevator opened a few feet away.
“Out stepped a bellhop who had a master key. As he came to my rescue I remember thinking I don’t know what I ever did to be so lucky; I haven’t led that good a life.”
It’s still a favorite quote. OK, you’re about to ask, what’s that got to do with Alan Dershowitz?
The guessing here is that he, too, must also be wondering what he ever did to be so lucky because the advancing sunset of his legendary career has suddenly morphed into high noon again with his adversaries choreographing the resurrection.
When Dershowitz rushed to Donald Trump’s side to oppose the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the president’s alleged ties with Russia, many cynically thought he was switching political horses in pursuit of a vanishing limelight.
Politically correct yahoos who once comprised his fan club suddenly washed their hands of him, or so he claimed in noting he was no longer being invited to their swanky soirees on tony Martha’s Vineyard.
Isn’t it entertaining to watch unctuous liberals coming face to face with their purported values?
They seemed to be saying Trump was somehow not deserving of the best legal defense he could muster, revealing in their castigation of Dershowitz that they still regard their erstwhile friend as synonymous with legal brilliance.
It’s obvious: If he were just an over-the-hill ambulance-chaser they’d still be rushing to embrace him.
But now, thanks to their transparent bias, he’s hot stuff again and doesn’t need their insufferable company to retain his lofty status in the social order.
How good a life he has led is beyond this column’s purview, but, like our partially disrobed pal from the world of sports, Dershowitz has to be marveling over how kind fate has been to him, using those who would demean him to make him a courtroom legend again.
When he says everyone is entitled to a robust defense, he doesn’t have to offer himself as Exhibit A, because his badmouthing critics are doing it for him.
How lucky can one guy get?