And despite Obama's strong repudiation of Wright last week, the media's obsession with Wright's inflammatory comments will only continue to fan the flames of controversy.

But at what point will the media start to give similar scrutiny to Sen. John McCain's association with John Hagee?

Hagee, a Texas pastor and televangelist, endorsed McCain in February. Hagee has called the Catholic Church "the Great Whore of Babylon," an "apostate church," "the anti-Christ" and a "false cult system," and he's linked the church to Hitler.

He also recently told a radio host that Hurricane Katrina was God's retribution for a planned gay-rights parade. McCain actively sought Hagee's endorsement and has continued to embrace his support.

When McCain accepted Hagee's endorsement, he said, "I am very honored . . . All I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's endorsement."

One morning last week, I typed "Jeremiah Wright" into Google News and came up with 10,315 results. When I typed in "John Hagee," I got 272.

Thanks to the media's nonstop coverage of Wright's association with Obama, Wright has become the centerpiece of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Hagee and his association with McCain is just a blip on the radar screen. For some reason, the mainstream media have ignored McCain's association with Hagee.

With all of the problems in America today - soaring gas prices, lost jobs, housing foreclosures, lack of medical insurance, American soldiers dying in Iraq, inflation, stagflation, recession, etc., it would be a tragedy if this election boiled down to Obama's association with Wright.

By the way, I'm not a shill for Obama. I supported John Edwards at the start of the campaign and then ended up voting for Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary. One of the main reasons that I voted this way was my concern that Wright would become the "Willie Horton" of 2008.

While McCain and the national Republican Party condemned a TV ad sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party that highlighted the ties between North Carolina Democratic candidates and Obama and Wright, the ad still ran.

The only way that Obama's "Wright problem" will go away is if the media start to give equal time and scrutiny to McCain's relationship with Hagee and Hagee's incendiary comments. Besides focusing on Hagee, they should scrutinize other loopy Republican-supporting religious leaders like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell.

It won't be enough for newspapers and other print media to do this. Wright's sermons from years ago would have continued to be ignored had they not appeared on YouTube, the nightly newscasts and cable news. Similarly, these visual media should take sound bites and videotape of Hagee's controversial statements and replay them for the country to see.

Doing so will show how it is unfair to attribute to Obama the radical views of Wright.

McCain has distanced himself from many of Hagee's controversial comments, yet he still accepts his support. Likewise, Obama has repudiated the incendiary statements of Wright, yet he has praised Wright's positive traits.

The media created the Wright controversy, and they can end it by giving the controversial views of Hagee equal time. It's the only way that we can neutralize the issue and stay focused on the real issues and problems that this country faces. *

Larry Atkins teaches journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University. His e-mail is larryLTatkins@aol.com.