HOLY hoop skirts: When did the clock tick back to 1958?

When Joe Biden tragically lost his wife and infant daughter in a car wreck in 1972, not a single colleague, friend or competitor advised him to quit his newly won Senate seat to raise his two little surviving sons.

Rather, he was sworn into office from the injured boys' bedside, and took to commuting an hour and a half each way from Delaware to Washington. And when Biden's second wife gave birth to a daughter, no one thought to ask him to step aside and stay home.

If Sarah Palin, tapped as John McCain's running mate, were a man, it's unlikely we'd even be having this conversation. (A man, or a Democrat.)

The stupendously sexist New York Times printed a front-page article noting that some unnamed women argue over "whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try."