I was websurfing recently, and came across a post by Daniel Davies of the Crooked Timber academic blog from September 1 about an Australian controversy over whether the Lebanese Red Cross conspired with Hezbollah to create anti-Israel propaganda. In the comments, and apropos of nothing in particular, he added, “tangentially to which, I was checking back on David Bernstein’s laughable and disgusting efforts on the Volokh website around the time of the Qana bombing and lots of them have been substantially edited.”
The implication is that my posts were so “laugable and disgusting” that even I thought better of them, and surreptitiously edited them so they wouldn’t haunt me for posterity.
So, for the record, let me say that Davies’s accusation is 100% absolutely false. I have not gone back and edited ANY of these posts, much less “lots of them.” Indeed, while I occasionally slightly edit posts within a few hours of their posting, usually for style, and I certainly often add “updates” (marked as such) within the first day or so, and usually within a few hours, I can’t recall EVER going back and editing an old post days or even weeks later.
I sent two emails to Davies, several days apart, denying that I or anyone else went back “substantially edited” any of my Qana posts, and asked him to either provide contrary evidence or to retract his comment and apologize. I received no response to either email.
I don’t know Davies, don’t actually know who he is, rarely look at Crooked Timber, and have no idea why he would first make this up, and then not respond when called on it. But there you have it.