Swimsuits to Civil Liberties : Attorney Dershowitz’s L.A. Book Tour Takes Him to All Kinds of Settings

Young women in swimsuits are scurrying back and forth, pausing to have their hair arranged and makeup applied. Reeking of hair spray, the cramped room with metal chairs and dirty plexiglass coffee table seems awash with confusion at 8:20 a.m.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to wear a bathing suit,” quips one of America’s most famous lawyers, who will wait nearly 90 minutes in this room above the KABC-TV studio.

Clad in a charcoal suit and black Rockport walking shoes, Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz has come to plug his latest book, “Chutzpah,” in which he argues that American Jews should stop allowing themselves to be treated as second-class citizens.

Dershowitz will get about a minute to discuss the 354-page book on “A.M. Los Angeles.” But not until the television audience has seen a man billed as a human calculator, actress-turned-producer Mariette Hartley promoting a play, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” and a woman who complains that her ex-husband was a “lousy lover.”

Not to mention a series of swimsuits designed to hide figure flaws.

“When you’re sitting up at 3 o’clock in the morning writing the last chapter of your book, you don’t think about how you’re going to be on a show with remedial bathing suits,” Dershowitz said.

Such are the indignities of book promotion. But Dershowitz, one of hundreds of authors who will tour the Los Angeles talk-show circuit this year, was not complaining about the chance for free publicity.

For the curly haired, bespectacled author, the “A.M. Los Angeles” stop was only the first leg of a hectic day earlier this week that began when Ken Wilson, the escort provided by the book’s publisher, Little Brown, picked him up outside his son Elon’s apartment building in Hollywood.

Spring and fall are the busy seasons for the amiable Wilson, a free-lancer who has chauffeured “everyone from Mickey Spillane to Captain Kangaroo” while the authors peddle themselves to the Los Angeles reading public.

No one keeps aggregate figures, but a local representative for Random House and its subsidiaries estimated that her office handled 120 to 125 tours a year. Publicist Annette Swanberg said she arranges about 60 tours annually for Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books.

By the time he turned in that night at the Century Plaza Hotel, Dershowitz had crossed the city four times in Wilson’s Toyota Camry. He had given four broadcast interviews and two speeches that were not part of the tour--one urging Jewish leaders to back efforts to free his client, Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel, and another on civil liberties before a dinner of 1,000 sponsored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation.

Wilson said it is not unusual for well-known authors to piggyback speaking engagements onto their book tours.

Dershowitz, whose trip to Los Angeles was wedged in among promotional tours of three other cities--San Francisco, Dallas and Chicago--sprinted to a telephone each time Wilson halted the car. He had just learned that the Petroleum Club in Dallas, where he would be speaking the next night, was insisting on black tie. There was no tuxedo in his small black leather satchel.

During a break in a live long-distance telephone interview with a Dallas radio station, he cradled one telephone on his right shoulder while grabbing a second receiver and holding it to his left ear. It was his fourth call about the tux. A look of relief brightened his face as he learned that a rental had been arranged.

An old hand at book promotion tours--”Chutzpah” is his fourth popular book--Dershowitz, 52, capitalizes on his media savvy. He knows that some interviewers would rather talk about his infamous clients--including Claus von Bulow (the subject of a movie based on Dershowitz’s “Reversal of Fortune”), former Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald and televangelist Jim Bakker--than the issues he raises in his new book.

Mindful of “conflicting agendas,” as he calls them, he was able to steer “A.M. Los Angeles” hosts Steve Edwards and Tawny Little back to his book after they pelted him with familiar questions about his practice. He confided that he admires client Leona Helmsley, the hotelier convicted of tax evasion, because she has chutzpah, a Yiddish word he defined as unmitigated gall.

But he barely got to summarize the book’s conclusion before time was up.

At his next stop, KABC radio, the surroundings were considerably more serene.

“I’ll bet no one at KABC-TV read that book,” chortled Michael Jackson, who would give Dershowitz an hour of time.

The diplomatic radio host and the feisty lawyer are a mutual admiration society. “It is such a pleasure and an oasis to have an intelligent discussion,” the author told Jackson during a break. Later, Jackson advised his audience: “If you’re not Jewish I really think you should read ‘Chutzpah.’ If you are Jewish you need to.”

Although Dershowitz’s thesis--that Jews, like other minorities, are still being subjected to discrimination and behave as though they are “guests”in this country--seems tailor-made to cause fireworks, there was only one tense moment while he was on the air. A man telephoning the Jackson show repeatedly accused the author of racism but would not explain what he meant. “What’s your point? What’s your problem?” said Dershowitz, visibly irritated.

“Oh, am I going to get mail!” groaned Jackson in mock annoyance when a commercial intervened.

From KABC radio, the pace quickened. A local Pollard supporter whisked Dershowitz to the Jewish Community Building on Wilshire Boulevard, where he put on another hat--that of crusading defense attorney--and engaged his listeners in a sometimes-heated discussion of the controversial case. He was given a tuna salad lunch in a plastic box but barely had time to plunge a fork into it.

Riding up to the eighth floor, he holed up in a loaned private office to do the Dallas call-in radio show. Next came a trip to Eagle Rock, for a 4 p.m. taping of the syndicated cable show, “Connie Martinson Talks Books.” “What a book!” exclaimed Martinson, whose well-thumbed copy of “Chutzpah” was studded with stick-on notes.

Between sips of water from a wine goblet, Dershowitz asserted: “Jews don’t have enough chutzpah. Despite the stereotype, we don’t demand enough for ourselves.”

It was the fourth time in a few hours he had delivered some version of that line, but he made it sound like the first.