The pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, made some controversial comments in several of his sermons. This is the church that Barack Obama was baptized into, the one he regularly attends with his family.

When some of those controversial statements got publicized, the resulting scandal dominated the national media for well over a week. Political pundits parsed Wright’s statements, going out and finding more, obsessing over their effect (real or imaginary) on the Obama campaign.

But how did this story become so dominant? These weren’t statements Obama himself made or endorsed–in fact, he specifically denounced Wright’s controversial remarks. And Wright’s symbolic role in the Obama campaign was quickly terminated when these statements came to light. So why did Obama get tarred with these statements? Why was the media so willing to engage in guilt by association?

Why is this even news? There are real issues going on, there are real controversies in this campaign going on, but the media is complacent to try to tar Obama by tying him to the pastor he freely and readily denounced.
While this Wright controversy was burning, Hillary Clinton severely hurt her national security credentials by lying about a trip to Bosnia, making her visit seem far more dangerous than it really was and inflating the trip to make her seem more experienced.

Recently, John McCain ruined his image as an opponent of special interests by fostering inappropriate relationships with lobbyists; most of his top campaign advisers are lobbyists, some whom even lobby their clients while on-board the Straight Talk Express.

McCain also severely hurt his foreign policy credentials by repeatedly making a massive gaffe on Al-Qaeda and Iran; he demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the difference between Shiites and Sunnis, and that he doesn’t understand that Iran is Shiite while Al-Qaeda is Sunni.

Google “Obama Wright” and you’ll get over 1.2 million hits.

Google “‘Hillary Clinton’ Bosnia” and you’ll get 210,000 hits.

Google “John McCain Iseman” and you’ll get 217,000 hits.

Google “McCain Iran Gaffe” and you’ll get 416,000 hits.

This is just an example of our twisted media culture, where mistakes and bad judgment on the part of actual candidates are stuck on the back burner and ignored, while the media obsesses over a muckraking scandal, pushed heavily by biased conservative interests, drummed up entirely to throw dirt on a popular politician.

We need to get ready for more bias like this. We need to be ready to push back against smear stories like this, and we need to be ready to call for fairness and balance in the media. If you haven’t already, bookmark both Media Matters and FAIR; read their websites regularly and keep up with the misinformation being pushed in the media.

UPDATE: I agree with Chuck Todd:

This was not a one-time slip and so, you know, this just shows you how much bank — how much of the foreign policy experience stuff [McCain's] got in the bank, because had Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over, and would have absolutely hurt them politically.