Even Sherrod, having just observed the consequences of sloppily charging people with racism, told CNN that Breitbart “knew what effect [the video] would have on the conservative, racist people he’s dealing with.” And as the scripted media introspection and the rehearsed “conversations” about race were inaugurated by those who already knew the answers, blogger and former Journolist member Matt Yglesias was falsely accusing libertarian economist Arnold Kling of racism—the second time Kling has had to endure the toxic charge. But Kling, unlike Sherrod, is an enemy.

If all this counted as a teachable moment, it is unclear who the students were…

But false (or flimsy) accusations of racism abound—they are everywhere one looks—though they rarely provoke the level of outrage seen in the Sherrod affair. This week, in a fit of boredom, I found myself leafing through a deeply silly book by William Kleinknecht, a crime reporter for a newspaper in New Jersey, portentously called The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America. If it wasn’t enough that Reagan betrayed, attacked, humiliated, and sold Main Street to corporations the reader is informed that after the 1980 election the United States was “turned over to…thinly-veiled racists.” Nowhere does Kleinknecht substantiate the charge, but when the accused is Ronald Reagan, why bother?