Senator Barack Obama, freshman Senator from Illinois and current frontrunner from the Democrat party for President, recently stated, “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”

To be fair, with the exhaustive schedule he and other candidates keep in running for public office, especially the highest office in the land, gaffes such as this are bound to happen. Yet, when a Republican utters such a misstatement we never hear the end of it.

Late night jokes are made on television shows. Our media portrays the poor exhausted Republican candidate as a buffoon, an uneducated fool who should not be in office.

Through the Bush 41 administration, we heard time and time again of Vice President Dan Quayle and any little misspeak he made. Fun was poked at Bush 41 for his slogan “read my lips, no new taxes” as he signed a large tax increase handed to him by the Democrat controlled Congress at the time. His “thousand points of light” and use of the word “prudent” were popular on comedy shows.

Emails are floating around showing such gaffes credited to Quayle, former President Reagan, former Vice President Al Gore and even current President Bush. Some of the gaffes are true; most are either exaggerated or even made up by comedians in their shows.

Many in the public accept these gaffes as facts, though and our media often runs with them in their effort to portray one party as unfit for office, while not paying too much attention to a gaffe like the 57 states stated by Obama.

President Bush is castigated time and again for saying “nucular” in his Texas drawl instead of the proper “nuclear.” Yet we know what he means as many misstate the same word. What goes unreported is that even former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter also misstated the same word, as did President Eisenhower, with relative impunity for their mangling of the word.

Rightwing bloggers are having fun with this, as did leftwing bloggers over gaffes by Republicans. Major media, on the other hand, seems to desire to leave this alone while sparing little expense in “reporting” similar gaffes by Republicans.

Poking fun at our politicians is as American as is Apple pie. Entertainers have made history, poking fun at them. But, somewhere along the line celebrities and media went from poking innocent fun to running articles using such unfortunate gaffes as “proof” the other party should be elected.

Somehow, Journalism has deviated from reporting news to manipulating the news. While the argument rages back and forth over the major media being liberal, moderate or conservative, the disparity between coverage of candidates gaffes is unmistakable.

Like others before him, Senator Obama jokingly admitted to his “57 state gaffe” when, after discussing the tragedy in Myanmar he said, “I hope I said 100,000 people the first time instead of 100 million. I understand I said there were 57 states today. It’s a sign that my numeracy is getting a little, uh” at which point an aide cut him off and ushered him away from reporters before he flubbed another one.

The next time you hear a Republican utter “nucular” or misspell “potato,” keep in mind they have their “numeracy” in order and know that we don’t have “57 states.”