The latest wave of media coverage has show after show displaying pictures of Barack Obama in African garb. On these shows anchors and pundits speculate whether or not this photo will have an impact on the presidential race? The answer I want to scream at the television is "None. If you would stop showing it over and over again until the audience is nauseated, it will have zero impact. If you you show it until I vomit, then it will have an impact and it won't be pretty."

The media has a positive impact on campaigns in general. They do a fair job of covering the campaigns, debates and issues. Unfortunately there are several ways that the media has negative effects on campaigns and the 2008 presidential campaign is no different.

1)Discounting candidates. Some worthy candidates just don't get traction because a select few of the candidates suck up all of the oxygen. Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and other candidates had a lot to offer the country, but they just never received the coverage and were forced out of the race early.

2)Predictions. These pundits are usually wrong in their predictions. The public doesn't appreciate it when the media doesn't let us vote on the candidates. They love to count a candidate out, repeat and speculate over and over about the abandonment of the campaigns. Examples include nearly putting the last nail in John McCain's candidacy before even one vote was counted.

3)Build them up to tear them down. When Hillary was ahead in the polls, the media thought she was destined to win. As a result the media put a lot of scrutiny on her and there was a frenzy to build Obama up. Now that Obama has had some success, the media is looking for ways to tear him down, looking at his experience, picking apart his wife's words, dragging out pictures of him in African dress just to try to bring him down.

4) Too much coverage to wing-nuts. Repeatedly the press has shown the clip of the Republican nut who opened for John McCain, yelling out Barack Hussein Obama. The best way to squelch nut jobs like that is to stop showing them in the glory of their stupidity. There is a reason this nitwit is on the radio. Spare us the gross details of his performance. It isn't worth watching.

5)Taking quotes out of context. The media is great for doing "Gotchas". These are small little blurbs that may have been 5-10 seconds out of a one hour speech. Even better are all the clips of fingerwagging, pushing, people fainting at rallies,and so on. These gotcha clips

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