The New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller repeats the myth that Barack Obama said Hillary Clinton was pretending to hunt ducks with a revolver in a Week in Review article today:

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain have both derided Mr. Obama as “elitist” for his remarks about bitter rural voters who “cling” to guns and religion, even as Mr. Obama, in a counterpunch, mocked her courtship of gun owners, depicting her as a kind of ersatz Annie Oakley “packing a six-shooter” in a duck blind. And Mr. McCain, throwing a haymaker of his own, pointed out in a recent speech to members of the National Rifle Association that “someone should tell Senator Obama that ducks are usually hunted with shotguns.”

But Obama never said Hillary was “‘packing a six-shooter’ in a duck blind.” His actual quote was the following:

She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley. Hillary Clinton’s out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six-shooter. C’mon, she knows better.

As TNR’s Jonathan Chait pointed out, “Obama was joking that Clinton was putting herself forward as someone who hunts ducks every Sunday and carries a six-shooter, not that Clinton hunts with a six-shooter.”

Chait has documented how this myth has been promoted by John McCain, who misquotes Obama as saying “like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, packin’ a six-shooter!” His misquotation already been repeated by the Washington Post and the Associated Press as well as a previous Bumiller article. Will the Times correct the record before this myth becomes conventional wisdom?