Maybe you read about the recent little Barack Obama-Ford Motor Co. dust-up in the paper of record yesterday. It sounded, for a moment, as if Ford might have caught the 2008 presidential candidate in another of the small but telling lapses that have dogged his young campaign -- and it seemed that the auto giant might actually have gained, for once, the high moral ground in the ongoing debate over what Detroit has or has not done to address issues like global warming, America's addiction to foreign oil, etc.

"Mr. Obama," the Times reported, "recently lectured Detroit's automakers, saying they were doing too little to reduce oil consumption. Last week, at a policy conference on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan, [Ford chairman] William Clay Ford Jr. told business leaders that Mr. Obama should have done a little more investigating before he spoke.

"'I was very disappointed,' Mr. Ford (below) said when an audience member asked about Mr. Obama's remarks. 'I would love to invite him to our Chicago assembly plant, which is in his state, where we make a vehicle that's more fuel-efficient than the one he's currently driving.'

"Senator Obama drives a Chrysler 300C sedan, which is rated at 17 miles a gallon in city driving and 25 on the highway. The Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego, which Ford builds at its Chicago assembly plant, are rated at 21 in the city and 29 on the highway."

All well and good -- except that, according to an Obama spokesman, the senator no longer owns the 300c. He got rid of it "a few weeks ago."

He does, however, own a Ford. A Ford Escape. A Ford Escape Hybrid.

No idea why the Times didn't know that little fact before running their piece. But one of two things is likely to emerge from this admittedly minor blip on the campaign radar: Edwards, Clinton, and the rest of the folks out there on the hustings are probably calling home and making sure that either the Prius is parked prominently in the driveway, or that their garages' windows have been quickly, thoroughly, conveniently painted over.