NY Times Ignores Its Own Story, Then Mocks McCain on Oil Drilling

The New York Times, while fawning all over Barack Obama's European sojourn, just couldn't resist taking potshots at John McCain who remained here in the United States -- you know, campaigning for the votes of people that can actually vote for him:

On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, cheered by as many as 200,000 people, Mr. Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and shared history. In contrast, just before he spoke, Mr. McCain, was sitting in Schmidt’s Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, having a bratwurst, and saying grumpily that he would prefer to speak to Germans when he is president, not before.

And if that wasn't enough, on a back page story of the previous day's edition, the Times ignored their own story located elsewhere in the paper, and in the process impugned John McCain's call for more oil drilling (along with taking a few more cheap digs at the GOP presidential nominee):

Then, too, Mr. McCain was plagued by bad luck and his own synapses. He was supposed to have a dramatic campaign stop on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday. But then along came Hurricane Dolly. And an oil spill that closed a long stretch of the lower Mississippi River on Wednesday undercut his message that offshore drilling was desirable and safe.

It would? Why? After all,

The 61-foot barge that has been leaking heavy fuel oil for nearly two days could be seen underneath the mammoth Crescent City Connection bridge. It was carrying 419,000 gallons of the heavy fuel it had just picked up from an oil distributor when it collided with a 600-foot tanker ship around 1:30 a.m., just off this city’s Uptown neighborhoods. The tanker did not leak.

That's right -- not only did this accident have not a thing to do with oil rigs/offshore drilling, the actual tanker didn't leak a drop. It was simply the barge leaking its own fuel.

(h/t to the excellent Wolf Howling blog.)