  We argue that the longitudinal lepton polarization and the forward-backward
asymmetries in exclusive $B\to (K,K^*)\ell^+\ell^-$ decays are largely
unaffected by the theoretical uncertainties in the long-distance contributions
both induced by the long-range charming penguins in the $\ell^+\ell^-$ channel
and those in the meson channels encoded in the meson transition form factors,
and are mainly determined by the short-distance Wilson coefficients at the
low-energy scale $\mu\simeq m_b$. Thus, the above mentioned asymmetries provide
a powerful probe of the Standard Model and its extensions.
