Joe ROBINETTE!! Biden.Photo: Getty Images

It’s widely acknowledged that Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate to balance out the ticket in his areas of weakness — national security, for example, or appeal to the female, blue collar, or smart-aleck voting blocks. One area in which Biden definitely doesn’t help, though: middle names. By now, we’re all aware that Obama is graced with the, er, politically uncooperative middle name of Hussein. But now the ticket is weighed down by a second, probably worse middle name: Robinette. That’s not a typo. Joe Biden’s middle name is Robinette. What the hell is that, even? It’s a little feminine, obviously. It also sounds like some kind of miniature bird, or maybe a doo-wop backup singer. Actually, it’s neither. As Biden explained it on C-SPAN a couple of years ago:

It's my grandmother Biden's maiden name. It's French. And it goes back a long, long way. Allegedly the Robinettes came over with Lafayette and never went home. I don't know that. We can't guarantee that.

Wait a second, wait a second. They “came over with Lafayette and never went home”? The middle name is bad enough, but were Joe Robinette Biden’s relatives … illegal aliens?