Ann Coulter wrote, before the Biden pick was announced,

This week, Barack Obama’s challenge is to select a running mate who’s young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don’t overshadow Obama’s. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline.

Instead, Obama seems to have selected Harold Stassen. (If you don’t remember who Harold Stassen was, click the link–but if you don’t remember him, that makes my point.)

Mickey Kaus put it this way: “Maybe when I get to Denver I’ll find someone who’ll explain to me why Biden is an inspired choice. He doesn’t have gravitas. He has seniority. “

Biden seems an odd pick for Obama, because some of Biden’s “gaffes“ have been racial ones.

• He told an Indian-American that in Delaware  “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
• He explained to the Washington Post editorial board that one of the reasons DC schools fail is their high minority population.
• He famously called Barack Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”[Biden Unbound: Lays Into Clinton, Obama, Edwards, By Jason Horowitz, New York Observer, February 5, 2007]

This last gaffe caused Pat Buchanan to praise him and me to defend him.[Face It, Anything You Say About Obama Is A Gaffe] There are organizations that exist to prevent someone who’s praised by Pat Buchanan and defended by me from even being quoted in the Mainstream Media. And they’re nominating Biden for VP?

I don’t see why Americans don’t give the women-only sport of rhythmic gymnastics any respect. It looks like an excellent way to keep your daughter off the pole, a classy way for show-offy pretty girls to dance for the admiration of the crowd.

Wilt Chamberlain suggested a couple of decades ago that rather than try to match men in men’s sports, women would be better served by inventing their own sports that highlight their physical advantages, such as flexibility.

By the way, returning to the topic of the unimaginative obsession with gender equality in the Olympics — Men do the triple jump? Well, then women must hop, skip, and jump, too! — one reason that women’s (girls’) gymnastics is so hugely popular at each Olympics is that the feminine events are adapted to feminine strengths. The men do six apparatuses, the girls four. The girls don’t do the upper body strength events, the rings, the pommel horse, and the parallel bars, and they do two events men don’t do (the balance beam and the uneven bars). Even the two similar events are adapted–the horse was turned 90 degrees for girls in the vault, and they use music in the floor exercise.