A Knick In Crime

Harvard Law School professor and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz late last year published his first novel called “The Advocate’s Devil,” for which TriStar Television recently paid $500,000 to make into a movie.

The plot: a New York Knicks basketball player is accused of rape.

This week, Newsday sports columnist Mike Lupica’s new novel called “Jump” will be in bookstores.

The plot: two New York Knicks basketball players are accused of rape.

What gives?

Lupica says that any similarities are coincidental. He says he started working on the novel in 1992 and chose the Knicks because he works in New York.

Lupica’s novel is about players named Ellis Adair and Richie Collins who are accused by a fitness instructor of rape.

Dershowitz’s book is about a Cambridge, Mass., lawyer named Abe Ringel who defends Knicks star Joe Campbell. Dershowitz says he chose the Knicks because he lives in Boston and didn’t want to pin an alleged crime--even if only fictional--on a Boston Celtics player.

Lupica says he hasn’t read the Dershowitz book and knows little about it.

Dershowitz, who says he’s never heard of Lupica, says he started on his book about two years ago.

He finds it hard to believe Lupica wouldn’t know about his book, because he has plugged it on nearly every major talk show, but says it probably is very different because it is more about a lawyer’s ethical struggles than basketball. Still, he says he’s curious about what Lupica wrote.

“He’s got one buyer. I’m going to run right out to the store,” Dershowitz says.

Lupica says he has no plans to reciprocate. “That’s more than he’ll get out of me.”

A New Grammy Category?

Federal workers are singing more than the blues these days in the Gingrich era of government budget cutting.

The latest publication from the American Federation of Government Employees union advertises for $5 a cassette of the “hit song” called “AFGE & Me (Proud to Make America Work).”

Here are some of the lyrics as printed in the newsletter:

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“At SSA we’re helping folks on phones and with computers,

At EPA we check the air weeding out polluters,

USDA means it’s OK the food is safe to eat ,

At FDA we test the drugs for standards they must meet.”

Stretching to rhyme, the song continues:

“Watching out for contraband on the border with Mexico,

We keep our livestock safe from ticks on a horse in Laredo,

Government employees, we’re one big family,

Overseas and coast to coast, together in unity.”

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Then, an alphabet soup:

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“FDA, USIA, VA and DOD,

NASA, HUD, and D-FAS, OPM and BOP,

Treasury and DOT, AAFES, INS,

DOL and FEMA, HHS we’re just the best.”

Finally, a rousing finish:

“Red tape in the way . . . we cut it,

Check is in the mail . . . we mean it,

Back pay due . . . we get it

Strong health care . . . you got it.”