The latest cover of the National Review has stirred debate over whether its editors intentionally wanted a racist depiction of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Liberal political blogger Matthew Yglesias has no doubt:

So National Review decided to run this very odd cover image of Judge Sonia Sotomayor: It seems that what happened was that, as conservatives are wont to do, they tried to do something that would be racist, but also arguably not racist. Hence, instead of depicting a Latina with a racist stereotyped image of a Latina, they depicted her with a racist stereotyped image of an Asian. It’s hard to know exactly what to make of that. But National Review editor Rich Lowry seems to have known exactly what to make of it since as this post makes clear he was anticipating people criticizing the imagery.

Here’s that referenced post by Lowry on nationalreview.com:

Caution: Accusation of racism ahead.  A writer for Salon just contacted me about the new Sotomayor cover of NR. Can a piece in Salon calling the cover racist be far behind?

And a later post by Lowry:

Already accused! Turn out my correspondent from Salon is way behind the curve-TPM and Daily Kos have already accused us of racism. You gotta move fast when you’re competing with your fellow hair-trigger PC cops on the left! I take it the theory is that we don’t think Latinas can be wise so we had to make her look somewhat Asian. Or something like that. What these people don’t understand is the entire concept of caricature (or of a joke). Caricature always involves exaggerating someone’s distinctive features, which is all that our artist Roman Genn did with Sotomayor. Oh, well. Keep it humorless, guys, keep it humorless.

Here’s more of Yglesias’ view:

At any rate, then he (Lowry) waited around a bit, got the accusations of racism he was waiting for, and then got to engage in every white conservative’s favorite passtime of wallowing in self-pity and calling his accusers humorless.

Unfortunately, there’s not a good shorthand term for the psychology behind this kind of behavior. “Racism” doesn’t, I think, capture it. But there’s this deranged fascination with walking up to the line and dancing around there in hopes of getting called on it. Then you get to become indignant. Because, again, the contemporary right’s main view on race is that actual racism against non-white people is only a tiny problem compared with the vast social crisis that allegedly exists around people being vigilant against racism.

Is the cover racist? It is fair to say National Review editors wanted the cover  to prompt accusations of racism?