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If you want to be a presidential candidate, you have to be ready for every little thing from your history to come into the limelight. And no candidate is exempt from this. There are people specifically hired to dig up dirt on politicians, presidential candidates, and anyone connected with them. Although all three candidates have had their past displayed before America, Barack Obama feels the brunt of the rumors and misinterpretations.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's comments from his south side Chicago church were controversial in itself. But since when do the comments of the people whom you know dictate your own ideas? And I think this shows that there is a deeper point to be made: media manipulation.

If you listen to the comments that were aired on the major news programs, there are only a few sound bites. I've counted repeatedly the sound bite, "God doesn't bless America; God damns America!" but there is no explanation to the context that it's taken out of. They just want to call him anti-American, and are quick to associate Obama with anti-Americans. If you do your research, he was talking about how even though this country in involved with Muslim extremists, it doesn't even compare to the atrocities that this country does to its own people: homelessness, the foreclosure crisis, inequality in the workplace, the treatment of Katrina victims, people with no health insurance (or even worse, no health coverage for those who do pay). He was talking about the hypocrisy that runs rampant when Americans want to claim we're the best in the world, yet these issues still go unanswered. But there is no explanation, just a sound bite that labels him an anti-American. No one wanted to listen to the whole speech.

Another speech that led to some controversy was his "attacks" on whites. But, this is another example of the media taking his speech out of context. Rev. Wright merely said that Hilary Clinton will never know what it's like to have a cab pass her by on the street, because she is a white woman. He was merely stating the obvious fact that this country is owned and ran by rich, white men, and if you have a problem with it, then you're probably one of them. It doesn't take a genius with a doctoral degree to look around and see that 99% of all banks, government and Fortune 500 companies are owned by rich, white men. So, in essence, it wasn't an "attack" on whites; he was merely stating facts.

Yesterday, on Air America Radio, there was an

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