You want offensive comments? Remember Katrina?

It's been over a week now that the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- Sen. Barack Obama's pastor in Chicago -- have been the top media headline of Election '08.

The question of whether it makes sense to judge politicians by the company they keep is valid, but the media's sudden interest in such guilt-by-association is a bit surprising.

For example: Where was the media's zeal for connecting politicians and the outrageous statements of their friends after Hurricane Katrina?

Consider Rick Scarborough. A Baptist minister from Pearland, Texas, Scarborough founded Vision America, one of the leading Christian conservative political operations in the country. In between speaking engagements and writing books with titles like "Liberalism Kills Kids," Scarborough organizes the Patriot Paster network, which claims some 5,000 religious leaders in the Midwest and South. Rev. Jerry Fallwell hailed him as one of the biggest new leaders of the religious right.

As a 2005 piece in the Washington Post documented, Rev. Scarborough also counts many leading Republicans among his closest associates. He boasts of frequent conversations with Senators Sam Brownback (KS) and Rick Santorum (PA), and worked closely with Sen. Bill Frist (TN) in pushing for the "nuclear option" of doing away with filibusters to block judicial nominations.

Brownback and Sen. John Cornyn headlined Vision America's "War on Christians" conference in 2006, and once-influential Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) called him "one of my closest friends."

But none of these high-ranking Republican leaders have been called on to recant their relationship to Scarborough, even though he's made statements that most would consider a bit radical. For example, the idea that God sent Hurricane Katrina to devastate New Orleans as punishment for U.S. policy in the Middle East. As Scarborough said in an email alert to his supporters:

"One other factor which must be considered: Days before Katrina nearly wiped New Orleans off the map, 9,000 Jewish residents of Gaza were driven from their homes with the full support of the United States government. Could this be a playing out of prophesy ('I will bless that nation that blesses you, and curse the nation that curses you')?"

Of course, Scarborough wasn't the only religious right figure to say that the Gulf Coast had it coming due to our country's sinning ways: influential conservatives Pat Robertson, Hal Lindsey and Charles Colson all chimed in with similar sentiments (and also have many friends in Washington).

But was Sen. Brownback ever asked about his relationship to Scarborough on the presidential campaign trail before he dropped out? Has Sen. Cornyn ever been asked to repudiate the statements of this minister in his home state that he closely collaborates with?

All of these politicians -- and others connected to Christian conservatives who made such statements -- should be asked: "Do you really believe God intentionally sent Hurricane Katrina to kill 2,000 people in the Gulf Coast, as claimed by your close political associates?" If not, follow-up questions could ask whether they 100% repudiate these leading figures of the religious right.

Until this happens, we'll know the Obama/Wright flap is a cheap campaign ploy that the media is all too gullibly reporting as "real news."

Or maybe we knew that already.

UPDATE: Barbara Ehrenreich has an interesting piece about Sen. Hillary Clinton's ties to a right-wing evangelical group in Washington, "The Family," which among other things has aided various dictatorships over the years. The definitive account of the group was written by Jeffrey Sharlett for Harpers in 2003.

Interesting information -- although I don't see Clinton's association with a powerful D.C. right-wing outfit popular among the Washington elite playing out in the media the same as Obama's connections to a fiery black minister in Chicago.