Amy Davidson of the New Yorker should take up bowling or gardening because history doesn’t seem to be her thang, if you will. In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s own false historical reference, made during a Wednesday press conference, of famed WWII era English Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Davidson jumped to her keyboard to further garble history with an April 30 blog post on her Close Read blog at the New Yorker website.
On Wednesday, Obama made a reference to an “article” he was reading “the other day” wherein he discovered that during WWII Prime Minister Winston Churchill supposedly said “We don’t torture.” (Transcript of Obama’s remarks)The following morning, Davisdon praised Obama for his sentiment and waxed envious over the “very good” article from which Obama gleaned the tale.
There is only one little problem with the whole thing. Churchill NEVER said the line that Obama claimed he said. And further the “very good article” that Davidson praised was erroneous to say so. This means Obama was wrong, the article was wrong and so was Davidson’s blog post.
