My dad wants to know if I've gone to see Alan Dershowitz. He asks every other week. Enough. Enough, already. Any man who has two full-time assistants (and this is when he is on sabbatical) is not leaping out of his leather-bound chair to lunch with me at Bartley's Burgers. The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati pays the man $15,000 to speak. He's consulting with Mia Farrow, and mike Tyson is on hold from inside his cell.

But you can't blame my dad. If the refrain of Jewish mothers is to eat well and dress warm, Jewish fathers just want their Harvard kids to go see The Dersh. And now Dersh has a new book. He's working on a novel, even. I figured that this was the stuff that gets a Crimson reporter in the door.

I was right. They even gave me a copy of Contrary to Popular Opinion. (No need to go through the publisher. Dershowitz has the entire length of a book-shelf filled with copies.)

I also asked for a press bio--the interviewer's cheat sheet complete with names, dates and the number of L's in Von Bulow. It starts with all the usual praise one expects from the dust jacket of a hardcover. Time calls him "the top lawyer of last resort in the country--a sort of judicial St. Jude." I read on...praise from Newsweek, Business Week, Life, Esquire, Fortune, People New York, TV Guide..

Wait. TV Guide? Yes. And there's more. The bio goes on to list the 27 major TV and radio shows on which Dersh has been interviewed, 24 journals and magazines in which he has been published--not counting the five newspapers that carry his syndicated column.

Then there are the books. Five. Then the clients: Anatoly Scharansky, Claus Von Bulow, Leona Helmsley, Michael Milken, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, Penthouse, Frank Snepp, John Landis, John DeLorean, David Crosby, Patricia Hearst, the Tison brothers, various death row inmates, Rabbi Meir Kahane....There are more.

And then the awards. Most of them are big-time honors. One wonders, though, why the bio includes the "Golden Plate Award." And why exactly does it mention the celebrity shootout at the Boston Garden--"he hit 13 free throws in 90 seconds? Nice shooting, but who cares? The end of the bio is a copy of a special "Dersh" card from Trivial Pursuit.

Clearly, in addition to his distinguished law career, Dershowtiz is an excellent self-publicist. He wins both fans and enemies this way. In the time that it's taken me to transcribe, edit and introduce this interview, five friends and colleagues have taken time out to tell me their opinion of The Dersh. "He's sold out!" one said. "What a sham!" said another.

But even when The Dersh loses, he wins. This is the man who says he likes it when his students hate him. He likes to be "in your face."

I believe him. I've been to the other side of the Dersh mystique. And nothing makes the man happier than the attention of harsh critics.

Except praise, of course. And he gets plenty of that from TV Guide.

How is your book going over? Very well. People, I think, are sick and tired of the conventional wisdom and popular opinion and they're tired of the group thing--that they can predict what you're going to say about a subject by what organization you belong to or what school you went to. If there's one thing that I try very hard to do, it's to think through every position for myself. I'm very strongly pro-choice, but I think Roe v. Wade should be overruled. I'm also, although I'm a strong advocate of freedom of choice, a strong opponent of Clinton's making that a litmus test for a nomination to the Supreme Court. So, You know, my opinions come out unpredictable in many ways. I'm a strongly committed Jew and yet I support the right of holocaust deniers and of Nazis to spew their poison. I think of myself as a feminist and yet I think that women who make accusations of rape cannot hide behind anonymity, must have their names disclosed. You know, my views don't fit neatly into any pigeonhole.

The First Amendment, though, is consistently sacred in your writings.

It's not a sacred text. I could never point to the Constitution as a sacred text because it was written by a bunch of white male bigots and landowners. I mean, I would not have voted to ratify the Constitution of the United States even with the Bill of Rights because I could never have voted for a document that makes African Americans three-fifths of a human being. So I would not have voted for the original Constitution. I would have fought against it. It's not the First Amendment that's sacred to me, it's freedom of speech that's sacred.

Do you think the First Amendment is adequate though?