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4.2.12
WC: 191694

Dershowitz acted as a sort of kibitzer for Harry. He noted that the crew of the Glomar
Explorer, [which] had been shown a videotape of Deep Throat, had more to do with
transporting obscene material in interstate commerce than Harry Reems did. Would Larry
Parrish prosecute them? When I asked Parrish, he said: “They’re not insulated against
prosecution.”

Not all the stories were flattering. Mike Royko complained in a syndicated article how depressing
it was that after two hundred years of men like Jefferson, Paine, Debs, and Darrow, “we are now
asked to fight for the right of Harry Reems to be a public creep…Anybody who contributes to his
defense fund,” Royko concluded, “is a mental moonbeam.”

But people contributed and Reems and I persisted in making our case in the court of public
opinion. In time, the publicity had its intended effect on the public, on the Justice Department,
and on the courts. We began to get the message that the Reems conviction was an
embarrassment. This was exactly what we had hoped would happen.

In the end, the Justice Department decided to drop the case. Reems’ conviction was vacated and
his indictment was dismissed, over the strong objections of the Memphis prosecutor and judge.
We did not have the law on our side, but we did have public opinion. We might have lost our
case in the court of law (or won it on grounds other than my “choice”, “externality approach,”)
but we had clearly won in the court of public opinion.39 Harry Reems went free, retired from the
porn business, became a born-again Christian and moved to Utah, where he sold real estate. As
my legal “fee” for winning his freedom, he sent me a photograph of him with the following
inscription: “To Alan Dershowitz who me everything I know.” The First Amendment was safe
from the likes of Larry Parrish—at least for a time.

My second encounter with Deep Throat presented a more daunting challenge to my theory. It
took place on my home turf of Harvard, and the people urging criminal prosecution were Harvard
students. The people who these students wanted to see prosecuted were other students, one of
whom eventually became a founder of Microsoft.

It all began with some drunken Harvard College students viewing the film Animal House and
throwing beer cans at the screen and damaging it. The Quincy House Film Society was
responsible for the screen. In order to raise the several hundred dollars needed for repair, they
decided to show Deep Throat.

Some women students who lived in Quincy House protested. “This is our home,” one
complained. “We shouldn’t have to be subjected to abuse and degradation right in our own living
room.”

The uproar had caught the film society by surprise. The showing of Deep Throat had become a
pre exam tradition at many colleges. My own nephew sponsored a showing at MIT. It was seen
as a lark, an escape from the tensions of the tests. But feminists were beginning to take
pornographic movies, especially Deep Throat, quite seriously.

39 I relate the other legal theories on which we might have won the case in The Best Defense pages 155-174.

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