A TIME-WARPED SEXIST ASSAULT

[Jacksonian]

A TIME-WARPED SEXIST ASSAULT

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.

They all do it. John Kennedy did it; so did Barack Obama: Men run for office and serve in elected positions while creating small children without ever being patronized as "super dads" or "multi-taskers."

Nor are they penalized, ridiculed or dismissed for ignoring their kids. They're good dads.

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.)

Palin is a mother five times over. She also hunts, fishes, coaches hockey, has a day job as the governor of the state of Alaska - and is known to commute home from the state capital of Juneau daily during session. Just like Biden.

And, until at least four months ago, Palin also had the ability to bear a child, which we've just learned is a talent she shares with her 17-year-old daughter.

But women on the left, who fought long and hard for the ability to raise children simultaneously with election cash, are in spasms. (Some have simply kept silent. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton - where are you?)

The same lefty media that studiously ignored the adolescence of Chelsea Clinton can't wait to dig into Bristol Palin.

The Diary section of Daily Kos Web site had a curious way to make Palin's daughter into a campaign issue: "Considering Palin was chosen solely for her religious right family values cred, Bristol's shotgun marriage and pregnancy are very fair game. They are the direct result of this lunatic abstinence-only garbage, and should be highlighted as such."

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."

Which left the field weirdly clear for Phyllis Schlafly, who helped defeat the Equal Right Amendment - and also ran for Congress while raising six children - to tell the Times, "People who don't have children, or who have only one or two, are kind of overwhelmed at the notion of five children."

The only question we should be asking is: Can Sarah Palin do the job?