You might be a racist if...

Comic Jeff Foxworthy hit it big in 1993 with the album “You Might Be a Redneck If ... ” highlighting his one-line observations about life in rural America. If you've ever cut your grass and found a car, Foxworthy counseled, you might be a redneck. If you see a sign that says “Say no to crack” and it reminds you to pull up your jeans, you might be a redneck.

Along with spawning follow-up albums, books, a movie, even a board game, Foxworthy created a whole new genre of instructional comedy. A universe of jokes now exists helping people identify their inclusion in various groups. You might be the resident of a particular state, an adherent of a religious denomination, a practitioner of a profession — you name it — if ...

Now some politicians and pundits are trying to get in on the act. Members of Congress, a New York Times columnist and even a former president are sharing their one-liners. Only, unlike Foxworthy, the jokes this group of clowns is telling aren't funny.

You might be a racist if you disagree with President Barack Obama.

Obama says he won't sign a health care bill that adds one dime to the deficit and that no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions. So if you suggest his deficit pledge is nothing more than “a promise in search of fulfillment,” or if you write that the public option “could cover all abortions if the administration chooses, and as Obama once promised,” as the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org does, you could be a closet Klansman.

You might be a racist if you think ACORN, the community organizing group mired for years in controversy, isn't worthy of taxpayer money and that it can't be trusted to help conduct the 2010 census.

So if you vote to strip federal funding from ACORN, as 83 senators and 345 representatives did — including a total of 221 Democrats — and if you write a letter severing ACORN's relationship with the census, as President Obama's own nominee to head the Census Bureau did, you could be a goose-stepping white supremacist.

You might be a racist if you think Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., is unfit to serve as the nation's chief tax writer.

Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, failed to disclose rental income and pay state or federal taxes on a vacation villa in the Dominican Republic and failed to disclose bank accounts with balances up to $1 million. So if you write that “mounting embarrassment for taxpayers and Congress makes it imperative that Representative Charles Rangel step aside,” as the New York Times editorial page did, you could be a member of the Aryan Nations.

You might be a racist if you call Kanye West a jackass.

But that was President Obama himself. Could the nation's first black president, whose election was supposed to usher in an age of post racial reconciliation, really be racist? It's an absurd proposition that shows just how absurdly easy it is for people to play the race card when they lack the ability or inclination to debate an issue on its merits.

The irrational hatred of racists, of course, does exist. The scurrilous accusation of racism, however, detracts from its reality. That's why you might be a fool if you exploit its specter and, in so doing, obscure the real thing.