IF YOU CRITICIZE BARACK OBAMA OVER BILL AYERS, it’s because you’re a racist!

Well, of course. If you criticize Barack Obama over anything, it’s because you’re a racist. No doubt that’ll hold true if he’s elected President, too, which will call for strict anti-racism laws to keep such things under control . . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Douglass Daniel accuses Sarah Palin of racism for tying Barack Obama to two white guys. Who’s playing a race card, Palin or Daniel? Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, AP byline, what should I expect? Or am I a racist for asking?”

Well, if by asking you intend to criticize Barack Obama, then yes, of course you’re a racist. See above.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Clark writes:

I think that McCain’s campaign should not let these racism charges hold them back in the least. I would even suggest that they welcome them. Implicit and explicit charges of racism in response to any fair criticism of Obama’s positions and of his past, in particular as it might relate to policy, positions and worldview have been leveled too often now without cause. The power of any future charge is now so attenuated, brittle, and trivialized, that it can be mocked with impunity; just as you and others are doing. Has it even occurred to some of these folks with such quick trigger fingers that in response, some voters, far from being cowed, might respond in quiet defiance?

Do they not remember Pennsylvania and West Virginia? Oh, how silly of me to forget: course they remember them as the purest evidence of racism. . . . It’s a target rich environment.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reputation-laundering.