Speaking of looking for common ground between the two parties, I have little doubt that everybody in the Senate – Democrats and Republicans alike – cringed deep down inside when Dershowitz first took the podium. Where did this bombastic SOB come from? Who’s advice did Trump follow to tag this cantankerous old dude to carry his torch across the finish line?
(Plus: Look at this sucker go – he’s 81 years old! – I sure hope I’m as spry and obnoxious as he is when I reach that age.)
This bipartisan unity reached its peak when Dershowitz came out again, carrying a 4-inch binder of notes. OMG. This is just plain cruel and unusual punishment. (Alias contempt of Congress.) It was the same way with the viewing audience – you tune out briefly, then return at the next commercial break – only to still see 2 inches of material left in the binder. Yawn. Back to the telenovelas channel to watch a repeat screening to practice your Spanish.
I had to catch myself at one point, as I actually felt a light breeze of sympathy for even the Republican Senators in the room, who couldn’t switch to the cartoon channel like President Donald “the duck” Trump admitted doing the next day.
On the plus side, I finally figured out why lawyers are such an amoral, shameless, petty subspecies of humanoids. Here we have a man raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, arguing with an extreme passion for the exact same ideals that launched the Nazis to power: (1) Abuse of power in a chief executive can never, ever be an impeachable offense. (2) The president can do absolutely anything in his power to get re-elected so long as he’s convinced in his own mind that his election is for the good of the nation.
Truly, lawyers have absolutely no qualms about throwing their own mother under the bus to win a case for their client. Otherwise, what exactly was Professor Dershowitz’s role in the case for the defense?
First of all, you have to look at the case made by the Managers in the days prior to the premiere of “The Dershowitz Show.” The House Dems had just spent three days giving a very engaging series of presentations. Granted, they were at times repetitive for the Senators in the audience, but this repetition worked perfectly for all the folks out in TV land watching in bits and pieces throughout the day. Every time you tune in, you learn new, compelling information – presented by charismatic, expert presenters. Oh, wow – this is really good stuff. Not just the content, but to see front and center all the inner machinations of the process (thanks to very expert insight from the media on breaks in the action). This is democracy in action. This is so way cool.
Truly, it was high drama worthy of an academy award. Moreover, there were no ads to ruin the conflict and confrontation with incessant, aggravating interruptions, asking you to buy dangerous meds (with a hundred side effects), pet food (more appealing than Domino’s cardboard pizza), or to lose weight (like, I sure hope our obese commander in chief is watching this ad).
In a word: you can’t help but get hooked big time.
“Hooked” is bad news for the President’s defense. Their worst-case scenario is having to build a case absent any sort of documented proof (against a very thorough and professional body of evidence) because they had no new documents to show. I laughed when Patrick Philbin, later in the president’s defense, said several times, “all the evidence we have comes from the House investigation and the public record.” Doh! Because, literally, all the other evidence is locked at Fort Knox up by the administration.
So, in the first three days, the House managers establish a large audience. The viewers appreciate the care they took to prepare their presentations (versus the junior-high ineptitude of the president’s men), the diligence made in collating the facts so we could digest them, and the random aspirations of lofty rhetoric that shine unexpectedly from the impassioned actors on the stage. (Why can’t any Hollywood screenwriters give us that kind of prideful relief?)
How to counter this growing fan base of the House managers? How indeed:
The president’s men roll out Ken Star to lecture us ad nauseum, then Professor Dershowitz to offend your sensibilities so badly you do just what I did – turn to another channel, out of sheer boredom. Mission accomplished, in part:
The jury, in the person of the Senators standing in judgment, felt much the same way – and more! Many of them had been in Professor Dershowitz’s classes at Harvard, and to those who went to lesser schools, he was the epitome of the grandiose, boring, arrogant creep lecturing to your worst 8 AM class horror as a law student.
Every time the defense noticed that the Republican senators were starting to waver in their slavish devotion to the party line – boom! – out comes Dershowitz to turn them off and to squash on the spot any ounce of empathy they might have for the prosecution’s case.
Meanwhile, out in TV land (in my case, MSNBC – which I usually don’t get with my cable package, but they had in on live during the impeachment), and also in the Senate chamber, the “Star & Dershowitz Comedy Act” accomplished a great deal more – they were both so extremely controversial, stood for such outrageously indefensible positions (which were so diametrically opposed not only to the historical and constitutional record, but to their own staunch positions a mere ten years ago), and were so shamelessly struggling to substantiate their case – well, the media, Twitter, and the blogosphere overall exploded with suppressed outrage.
Distraction. It’s all distraction: Keep everybody focused on article one “abuse of power” because article two “contempt of Congress” is so much easier to prove – and, worse yet – it’s fully documented, and requires no further proof whatsoever.
It’s kind of sad that a man like Professor Dershowitz would willingly sacrifice his fifty-year teaching career at Harvard, to allow himself to be so abused and maligned in front of the most hallowed deliberative and legislative body in the whole world. For God’s sake, he calls himself a constitutional scholar – then goes and rips the Constitution to shreds in full view of the public, no less than Speaker Pelosi ripping up the copy of Trump’s speech after the State of the Union address.
Must I remind you of the evil man directing this whole dramatic action from behind the curtain, stage right? Alias Reichsfuhrer Trump, glorifying at the absurd paradigm he’s made of Congress, the Constitution, and all values American.
Contempt of Congress. No doubt about it, folks.