Did he or didn’t he? That is the question circulating across the Internet. Did Sen. Barack Obama use the dreaded “race card”–something his campaign once accused the Clintons of doing during the primaries?

John McCain’s campaign thinks so and says, ” Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” McCain campaign chief Rick Davis is quoted as saying by Reuters. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

How did we get here so early in the campaign?–and , yes, although the primaries dragged on for an eternity, the actual contest between the two rivals is still at a fairly early stage.

Basically, McCain aired commercials suggesting that Obama was shallow–and even tied him in with the likes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, suggesting Obama was a “celebrity” as they are and with just as little substance.

Obama counter attacked–which is the way this stuff usually goes down–he said, according to Reuters, “McCain was trying to scare voters away from him by pointing out he had ‘a funny name, and he doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills.”

Talk about fighting words.

Stay tuned because this slug fest is going to get a lot more bloody before it is over.