What do you do when your star guest op-ed contributor writes a piece decrying the very tendencies that your star op-ed columnist exhibits all over her column, which is set to the run the same day? Well, if you're the New York Times Week in Review Op-Ed section, you run the pieces side-by-side, so everyone can see the hypocrisy.

This past weekend, the Times ran an editorial by Elizabeth Edwards, titled "Bowling 1, Health Care 0," in which the cancer-surviving wife of an ex-presidential candidate called out the news media saying, "[E]very analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliff's Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture." She disparages the narrative-driven political coverage, because if a candidate isn't breaking down a race or gender barrier, or isn't on a first name basis with 9/11, or never played a district attorney on TV, well then, you're left with Joe Biden. A fine enough candidate, but one whose credentials were crowded out by the more colorful stories of his rivals. Edwards writes, "Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score."

To the left of Edwards's column, is a piece by Maureen Dowd called "Desperately Seeking Street Cred." In the piece she makes a whopping zero references to Obama's actual policies, while mentioning his aura, his smoking, his eating habits, his basketball game, his wardrobe, his magazine shoots and of course, his infamous bowling score.

This is not a case of the Times providing a point-counterpoint. The page reads as if Edwards had selected the Dowd piece as an example of what not to do. While the placement may have been coincidental, the Times helped to solidify Edwards' point. And it happened to do it by undermining one of its own marquee columnists.