The NYT, McCain, & The Off Shore Drilling Accident That Did Not Occur

The NYT is taking great pleasure in comparing the screaming throngs of euro-lefties welcoming the Messiah to the small crowds being drawn by McCain. As they put it in their page 1 story:

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.

Then on a back page story about Senator McCain, the NYT included this passage:

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.

Perhpas if the NYT writers bothered to check their own papers they would find that the oil spill was wholly unrelated to offshore drilling. The spill involved a collision between a heavy tanker presumably carrying oil and a barge. The tanker has not lost a drop of oil. The barge's own fuel tanks ruptured and are leaking their fuel into the Mississippi. Ah, but why let facts stand in the way of spin.