A great number of world leaders, including President Barack Obama, were slated to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, yesterday in Krakow. They were thwarted by volcanic ash from an eruption in Iceland, which has grounded many flights in Europe, so that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, along with other world leaders, also cancelled plans to attend the funeral.

Washington Times headline “Obama skips Polish funeral, heads to golf course” sounds like President Obama just decided he’d rather go play golf than attend Kaczynski’s funeral. And it also underlines that “Other foreign leaders used different modes of transportation to get there”.

To top things off, the remainder of the article is an attack on President Obama’s golf habits.

And Polish commentators said such language, backed by Russian decisions to call a day of national mourning and show Oscar- winning director Andrzej Wajda’s film on Katyn on national television, suggests the countries may be headed for the kind of rapprochement German Chancellor Willy Brandt started in 1970 by kneeling at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

“Medvedev didn’t have to come to Krakow, he’d already done a lot. But he came. His presence is more important than Obama’s absence,” wrote commentator Aleksandra Klich on the Web site of newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.