Maybe you missed this controversy, and your life was probably richer more serene for it. If that is the case, please forgive me for shattering that tranquility by providing you with a window into the inane world of internet trivialities.

You might recall that a guest on MSNBC recently leveled the familiar accusation that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was actively seeking to shed his skin tone in order to appeal to what is presumably a hopelessly racist Republican electorate. It is a familiar charge, particularly coming from MSNBC. The same accusation was made against former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain before he briefly rocketed to the top of the polls of Republican primary voters.

But some liberals thought that this MSNBC guest perhaps had a point when a controversy over what was believed to be Jindal’s official portrait erupted on the internet.

The breathless reactions from the left to this portrait are preserved for posterity here. More than a handful of internet critics determined that the denigration of Jindal on MSNBC, founded on the claim that he was uncomfortable with his skin color, had been proven accurate.

There was just one problem: That isn’t Jindal’s official portrait. It was a painting made by a Louisiana constituent that was on loan to the governor’s office. This is the governor’s official portrait:

And, with that, the self-satisfied judgmental grousing from the internet’s peanut gallery grew mercifully silent.

But Jindal has earned the ability to look down scornfully on the left for leaping to conclusions about the racial consciousness of both Jindal and his Republican supporters. And Jindal made the most of his earned moral superiority.

“I think that this whole thing is silly. I think the left is obsessed with race,” Jindal said at a breakfast event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “I think that the reality is that one of the dumbest ways we divide people is by skin color.”

“I think that the left is devoid of ideas and this is unfortunately what they’ve resorted to — name-calling, attacking, dividing people by the color of their skin,” he added. “One of the great aspects of our country is that we’ve been a melting pot, and it shouldn’t matter whether you came here five minutes ago or 100 years ago, we’re all Americans.

“If people want to debate my ideas, they should debate my ideas,” Jindal concluded. “I think it’s time to move beyond all this silliness. If it helps you, you’re more than welcome to put a disclaimer in every article that I’m not white. It really doesn’t bother me.”

If the left were truly interested in achieving a colorblind society, this comment would not only fail to bother them but it would be celebrated. The opposite is, of course, true. Jindal’s failure to indulge in racial agitation is a threat to the left. Calling the left’s attachment to and invention of racial controversies out as “silly” will not be brushed aside by those who adhere to this ideology.

Jindal will be mocked and ridiculed by the same people who rushed to jump to the conclusion that the Pelican State governor was so ashamed of his heritage that he had it whitewashed out of his formal portrait. Those same people will likely fail to understand why the governor of Louisiana is not treating their criticisms of his racial consciousness with much seriousness.