This is weird...I don't know what this post will look like (the margin is in the middle of the page)

Anyway...Mitt Romney "had to" apologize for using the "racial" term "tar baby"  and now John Kerry has used it to describe tactics of John McCain.  So...racial term or not?

Only because we have made it so.

It started out not:

(per wiki)
Tar-Baby was a doll made of tar and turpentine, used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fought the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he became. In contemporary usage, "tar baby" refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by additional contact. The only way to solve such a situation is by separation.^[1]