Race-card baiting

With the "Celeb" ad, people read way too much into the whole "white sluts with black guy" thing. But c'mon: McCain's latest ad features three white women fawning over Obama, followed by some dude saying, "Hot chicks dig Obama." In today's media cycle, where's the line between invoking miscegenation and trying to bait pundits into saying so? Is there even a line at this point?

I still think the ad has no real grounds to cry racism. But it does contain juust enough insinuation (especially in the context of the first uproar over "Celeb") to bait people like Bob Herbert into saying stupid, counterproductive things like "Why is everyone missing the phallic symbols in McCain’s Britney ad?"

Campaigns spend millions of dollars on each ad they craft, so they're incredibly deliberate with the content they use. The more pundits cry racism over ambiguous ads, the more it helps McCain. There isn't a huge logical leap here.