It's getting pathetic really, how eager conservatives are to accuse black people of racism these days -- a la Andrew Breitbart and his various Shirley-Sherrod-like smear jobs. Aren't these the same folks who squeal piteously that "racist is the worst thing you can call anybody" whenever it's a right-winger who indulges it?

For instance, that recent Gallup poll finding support for President Obama still strong among blacks but down to only 36 percent among whites was evidence of "racism" among blacks, according to wingnut talk-show host Lars Larson yesterday on Fox's America Live with Megyn Kelly:

Larson: Well, it tells you that black Americans, for whatever reason, have decided to support this president, and it's hard not to read the race bias in that. To suggest that the president has failed, his policies have failed, he doesn't appear to be listening to the American public, and the American public has figured that out. And the only ones who are still solidly supporting him by 91 percent, are people who happen to share his skin color. So it's hard not to see that that support is because of his skin color.

And I would think that if this was reversed, if this was white voters supporting a white candidate in the face of overwhelming failure, then people would say they're supporting him because they're being racist. I think black Americans should be ashamed of those numbers.

Yeah, OK, I wound up with coffee all over my keyboard when I heard that one too.

See, Lars, it may be hard for a white guy from Portland to get this, but here's how this racism thing works:

Racism, once again, is all about believing one's race to be superior to all others, and concomitantly that all other races are inferior -- and it always emphasizes dehumanizing attacks, demonization, and character slurs in the process of establishing that inferiority.

So it is in fact racist to be ready to jump the gun and condemn someone of another race as being a failure -- with only the slimmest of evidence, and plenty of counterevidence.

It's not racist to refuse to join in that condemnation, particularly if you're a member of that race -- and particularly if that race has a history of being prematurely condemned as failures. Quite the contrary: this is known as standing up to racism.

So you know, when you're busy throwing President Obama under the bus and accusing black people of "racism," you're actually just raising real issues about just why so many white people are eager to do so -- issues that you and Megyn Kelly prefer to bury under groundless charges of racism.

And it's funny: the approval ratings for President Bush never broke the numbers down by race, so we can't be sure. But my recollection is that the tiny, sub-30-percent of Americans who still supported President Bush late in his tenure were almost 100 percent white.

And yes, they did so in the face of manifest and abject failure: Bush's presidency was the most catastrophic of any in our lifetimes.

But I sure didn't hear anyone accusing those bitter-enders of racism at the time. Particularly not from the likes of Lars Larson -- who was adamantly among them.