Kornblut mentions sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton at the hands of the Republicans. But what does she mean? Criticism of Hillary Clinton's policies as first lady? My recollection was that Republicans were offended that she wasn't elected to any office and therefore shouldn't have been making policy. Wouldn't evidence of actual sexism be easy to track down? Didn't Rick Lazio's inept campaign in 2000 at some point say or do something obviously or implicitly sexist? Wouldn't a feminist political reporter have seared into her mind egregious examples of actual sexist behavior?

No. We get what ifs and the opinion of Howard Wolfson as evidence that the Republicans are, or would have been, sexist.

The real story is this: Hillary lost a campaign in which gender and sexism was an issue to another Democrat. There's nothing more to it. But if somehow Republicans can be blamed, then it would excuse what will surely be more sexism to come from the Democratic side.

What Kornblut really wants us to come away with is this: Hillary endured sexism, so Palin must. The fact that in both cases the sexism came from the Democratic side shouldn't be considered, though. The Republicans would have done it.

Opinion and conjecture purporting to be reporting and analysis is precisely why so many people have come to distrust the mainstream media. The reporter's job is to gather facts and sometimes analyze them. But not much reporting or analysis is getting done here. It's an opinion piece, so fair enough. But wouldn't a political reporter want to document sexism in a campaign, Democrat or Republican, were it happening?

My fellow reporters and I never really did resolve the mystery of the "iron my shirt" episode; the two young men refused to give us their names and offered strangely vague reasons for being there.

Let me indulge in some conjecture of my own: If the two were Republicans (and not, say, Obama supporters or supporters of one of the other Democratic candidates), the reporters damn well would have figured out who they were, because they had an incentive to. There was a big disincentive to expose sexism in the Obama campaign, because it would surely hurt Democrats in the general election regardless of who won the primary. Many of Hillary Clinton's supporters are still smarting over their perceived treatment by the Obama folks, and part of their pain was that little of it was reported on in the major media during the six-month Obama-worship session.

Sexism is alive and well in the Democratic party, and will persist as long as reporters such as Kornblut are Democrats first and feminists second. The question is, how many women at large will be so partisan in November?