As Dodai noted last month when discussing the rash of unformed infant faces staring out at us from every tabloid corner, "I hate, HATE the predisposed notion that the lack of a Y chromosome means I must involuntarily drool at the sight of an infant. Cute babies are cute, but some of them look like undone suckling pigs that need to go back in the oven."

Which sounds angrier, but reminiscent of, what Sylvia Plath wrote in the Bell Jar when fretting over the fact that she wanted to be a famous poet instead of "devoting myself to baby after fat pulling baby":

"I smelt a mingling of Pablum and sour milk and salt-cod stinky diapers and felt sorrowful and tender. How easy having babies seemed to the women around me! Why was I so unmaternal and apart?" Plath wrote almost fifty years ago.

And what I'm wondering is how is it, in 2008, that things seemed to have changed so little when it comes to the mommy game. How did motherhood become the only acceptable expression of female power? The message that Sarah Palin gives when she spends the first 50% of her Vice Presidential candidacy acceptance speech talking about her role as wife and mother is the same message that tabloids give off when they go absolutely bonkers about star spawn: you might be successful in your given field, but all that means nothing unless you've given birth. (And then dieted down back to pre-baby weight within weeks.) And it's why Palin is ultimately so much more palatable for many people than Hillary ever was: her continued fertility is in our faces 24/7.

Allegra Maud Goldman is a coming of age novel that takes place in the 30s. The eponymous main character is about 12 years old, and her cousin Sonia informs her that she'll never really be happy until she has a baby nursing at her breast. "What a disgusting notion," Allegra says. "You mean, because of being female nothing else will ever make you happy?" And Sonia replies, "Not really happy. Not in the same way." How sad for us that in the aughts, that still seems to be the prevailing pop cultural notion of female satisfaction.

Allegra Maud Goldman [Amazon]
The Bell Jar [Amazon]

Earlier: Why Sarah Palin Incites Near Violent Rage In Normally Reasonable Women
Sarah Palin Joins Angelina, Jamie Lynn, As Cover Moms With Probs
'Us Weekly' Editor: Shunning Kids Makes You A Communist
I Am Fucking Sick & Tired Of Baby Bumps

MOE: Hey we can sort of start now if you want, though I'm still mostly reading through stuff. I just bought some beer because I think I'm the soberest person in Philadelphia right now. (The Eagles won a REALLY CLOSE game with the Rams today.) But here's something fun:

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

Oh God, Karl Rove. How do you do it, Karl Rove? You secure the election of a president so incompetent and widely loathed he decimates your party, then you leave the business for the media. Once in the media you commence bashing the media. You bash the media for asking questions about — not reporting, just asking around about — a rumor.

MEGAN: I am well on my way to non-Eagles-related drunkenness and I still cannot believe Steve Schmidt. Or Karl Rove. Like, seriously, did we watch the same speech? Only I thought it totally bombed and I talked to a shit load of Republicans at the wake today and people thought it fucking killed.

MOE: The sordid details of which are clearly, creepily reminiscent of the (much more easily refutable) rumor you disseminated to nastily defeat your boss's rival in the 2000 Republican primaries. And eight years later, said rival's distance from your old boss being the single-most compelling trait for Republicans to safely rally around, your old cronies take over his campaign, choosing a running mate whose most salient characteristic besides her nice bod is that she was the only member of the shortlist with a dearth of accomplishments deeper than that of your old boss in 2000, and then exploit the scurrilousness of said (much less obviously mendacious) rumor about said running mate's "personal" life to smear the "media"… (And who is paying for this? The media. "I'm not in the media, I'm around the media" is I believe how Rove put it…)

MEGAN: I wonder, honestly, if Rove even takes himself seriously at this point. I mean, the Palin Blake Slate is one of the reasons she was chosen.

MOE: Nah, he can't possibly. I actually find him more amusing than offensive at this point. Although maybe that's just because I read Safire today.

MEGAN: I did not read Safire today. I honestly feel like reading columnists is like a job that I don't get paid enough to do.

MOE: Don't let it hurt your teeth too much.

MEGAN: Honestly, at the point at which he says that Broder was the only fair pundit in attendance that night, it's hard to gag while I'm laughing so fucking hard.

MOE: And in shades of Friday's "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to calm myself down by talking about Bill O'Reilly," I entreat you to calm yourself down, after taking a gander over there, with the soothing relative sanity being preached by Chuck Krauthammer.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, he said something true:

The McCain acceptance speech reads better than it was read.

Oh, wait, here he's back to teabagging McCain:

That called for McCain to set aside his longtime reluctance to recount publicly his wartime suffering.

Ummmm, you know, except for his FUCKING MEMOIRS.

MOE: Oh shit, I am starting to find Palin so relatable though! Back in Wasilla they used to call her base of support the Liquor Cabinet.

MEGAN: Man, I would totally vote for the Liquor Cabinet.

MOE: Oh dear, and here her ex-brother in law admits he used a Taser on his 10-year-old son.

MEGAN: Ugh, that is super lame. Also, did you notice that after her announcement, she took her bouffant-y twist out? One of my reporter friends was like, she wears it like that to seem taller, she's gonna have to take it out for the campaign, McCain isn't tall enough.

MOE: Oh God Janice Min Janice Minnnn I'm boycotting you now:

“She out Obama’ed Obama with her speech,” said Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, who said the criticism of its coverage would pass soon enough. “She came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone. The way media works now, it is impossible to separate the personal from the political, and I think her role as a celebrity — how she does on that level — could have a significant effect on the election.”

Yeah I noticed it; I believe they decreed it to be Hepburn-esque in the New York Post. Here, exhibit five.

MEGAN: I didn't tell you! David Carr interviewed me for that piece at the Vanity Fair-Google party... and didn't use my quote. But it might be because I was drinking enough that Ana Marie Cox was like... um, what are you drinking? Because I was sort of lapping her on her alcohol acquisition. That's not the best sign, probably. Ok, I've found my first reason to be actively and yet completely unreasonably against Sarah Palin, other than the whole anti-choice thing: the use of multiple exclamation points:

"New administration finally allows new input, fresh ideas and ENERGY to work with the public to shape this city!!!"

MOE: Ok and I've found my first reason to reconsider my general assertion that the media hasn't been overstepping:

And yet, you get the feeling that at the end of the day, she could shake out that lustrous mane (longer than any other major female U.S. political figure's) and get it on with her man. She wears skirts that are quite form-fitting and often goes without stockings. As ZZ Top might say, she's got legs, and she knows how to use 'em. When Sen. John McCain introduced her at an Aug. 29 campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, she was wearing open-toed red patent leather shoes.

That is the resident fashion critic at the LA Times.

MEGAN: Um, fucking gross. Also, I have peep toed pumps, that obviously means I'm a fucking whore.

MOE: Well you're obviously a fucking whore. But so am I and I have three pairs of shoes, everyone knows that.

But, oh my God and she is totally the Britney Spears of MILFs.

Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.

Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.

MEGAN: Yes, I mean, shoes do not equal whore, like, wtf is the LA Times fashion critic talking about?

MOE: Um, is that really what "the incident shows" Washington Post?? Or does the incident show that SARAH PALIN IS A TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO NOT FOR NO REASON AT ALL LEAKED AMNIOTIC FLUID ALL OVER THAT PLANE (or whatever.)

MEGAN: Ok, well, that doesn't say back seat or front seat, plus it doesn't mention whether she was breast feeding or not. I dunno, I got kicked out of a bar for being there with a pregnant friend who was like I JUST WANTED ONE GLASS OF WINE. Also, my vagina leaks a lot, particularly when I'm ovulating. I'm like sloppy, annoyingly wet.

MOE: Ugh that is so annoying. Didn't they read the story about how you can actually binge drink during pregnancy so long as you only do it a few times a month or so?

MEGAN: I don't know, they were complete assholic assholes about it.

MOE: OOOOOOH maybe you are just female ejaculating all the time like those women in those other stories who have orgasms all the time and have to strap miniature vibrators to their underwear just to get through the day????

MEGAN: Nah, when I was a teenager, I went to my doctor and she said it was normal. Like, it's my body being like IMPREGNATE ME!! But, fuck that bitch, I have an IUD.
Anyway, so if she got 600 votes in her first election and 900 in her second, then despite what Mitt Romney said, she didn't get as many votes in two elections as Joe Biden got in Iowa.

MOE: Hahaha oh Mitt Romney, please watch him now in this clip I made of that speech — well actually I had Nick McGlynn make it, thank you Nick — but I sat through the speech for the purpose of conveying in 42 seconds how insane it was. And I was pretty sure that crap about Biden getting fewer votes was, in Noonan parlance, "bullshit" but thanks for that.

MEGAN: I heard that and I was like... yeah, there's no way that's true. I used up 90 percent of my internet connection Wednesday night proving it.

MOE: Yeah, the thing that sucks about these Republicans is that they don't care if you fact-check them. I really wish Plouffe or whoever could just get up and say something equally outrageous and blasphemous like…hold on…like how about, "Sarah Palin ran a town that is smaller than many high schools!" Oh wait, that's true, hm, or like, what about "Sarah Palin's fiscally conservative policies managed to sink that tiny little town into enough debt to buy a brand-new Prius for every household in it TOO BAD HER HUSBAND IS THE TOOL OF ALL THOSE STUPID OIL COMPANIES." Ughhhhhh but that would also be true I think!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, another convention story I meant to mention: I met David Gregory in a Starbucks. He's replacing Matthews and Olbermann as anchors. Only, back at Wonkette (now erased in this server migration), I posted this video of him dancing to Mary J. and my friend Eric Brewer tracked him to a video of Obama dancing on Ellen and he had a poll about who was better and Gregory won. So, I was like, hey, so, like, I did this video of you and Obama dancing and he was like, oh, I totally saw that. And then I blushed and got totally awkies.

MOE: Well in lieu of lending credence to the scurrilous rumor I heard about Palin's heroic son in the Army I am going to ask you if you read today's Filkins piece in the Times Magazine about how Pakistan has turned into the Minneapolis of the Terrorist Convention and part of that is flaky Benazir Bhutto's fault for thinking it was a good idea to arm the mujahadeen back when we also thought that was a good idea, oh and did we mention history and that repeating itself thing, as comforting as it is to know that people make the same stupid mistakes and repeat all the same fuckups even in places where the average citizen doesn't consume a metric tonne of alcohol every month, it is not very comforting at all actually. Here it is. Obama was good on this issue the other night with O'Reilly, incidentally, not that O'Reilly had any idea.

MEGAN: I keep meaning to watch the O'Reilly shit, but my parents don't have cable. Anyways, anyone who elects Zadari deserves what they get, sort of like how I feel the overwhelming majority of people who either voted in GWB for a second term or — more likely — didn't fucking bother to vote better not now be bitching about their adjustable rate mortgage, I tell you what. Even people in Pakistan know he's a Thaksin-level corrupt asshat — and they probably have some idea who the fuck Thaksin is, too. Also, I object to the assertion that I consume a metric tonne of alcohol a month. That's why I mostly drink wine and hard liquor, to keep the tonnage down.

MOE: Oh god yeah Thailand, we could discuss that too, and Freddie and Fannie, THE NIGHT COULD LAST FOREVER. But what's hot right now? I thought the Times magazine story by Frum on Republicans and income inequality was interesting, if namely for its incongruity following a week during which the proverbial Bullshit, as Janice Min so eloquently pointed out, triumphed so decisively over Shit That Actually Matters.

MEGAN: Wait, income inequality? Get yourself some fucking bootstraps, yo. Does anyone even fucking know what bootstraps are?

MOE: Whoa, the origins of all the Palin kid names! Turns out that taken together they all come together to mean "CANNY ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT OBVIOUS CORPORATE BEHOLDENNESS BY INGRATIATING SELVES TO NATURE FETISHIZING IDIOCRACY" or just "FLAGRANT POLITICKING RIGHT FROM THE START." Fuck I somehow didn't realize Sarah Palin married Todd because she was knocked up. That is so rouge cou.

MEGAN: I mean, it's like a month, tops that they knew. Chances are, like other super-Catholic friends of mine, they boned a little early and found out a couple weeks after the wedding regardless.

MOE: Nah nah Track was born eight months after they eloped "to save money." I dunno, it's funny. God, who gets pregnant the first time they have sex? Well, I have a friend whose parents did, but how crazy. Oh man it's getting late though I guess. And there's still so much! Damn the weekend for being over.

MEGAN: Well, luckily, I opened a magnum of wine! I got plenty of time!

MOE: Ok i'm getting another beer. Dogfish 90 minute IPA, not that they're sponsoring me. Not that i would LET THEM.

MEGAN: I've got a Yellowtail Cabernet. I am not going to pretend if a winery wanted to sponsor my blogging I would deny them the opportunity, but I would rather it be something non-corporate like Guglielmo or Hecker Pass, two of my favorite family wineries.

MOE: Ugh are we too far-gone — and too far down on the moral authority pay grade — to weigh in on Biden's belief that life begins at conception? Because personally I am inclined to say "well sure it does, so what" but you all know how paranoid I am about seeming "flip."

MEGAN: I mean, Biden's a Catholic, that's the party line, right? I just don't buy that. I don't believe it in the slightest. I'm not sure I believe in a soul. Potential life? Ok, maybe, but all evidence is that plenty of potential lives are ejected regularly from women's bodies. I just... I just don't buy that a zygote is A Life.

MOE: Right, well the "soul" is a different matter. As I think we might have discussed before, there's a genuine debate within the believers in souls as to how a soul could be formed at conception, then split into two separate souls two weeks later. Anyway "Life" …bacteria is life. Now human life is more important than animal life, but ughhhh if embryo life or fetus life was as precious as regular fully formed human life you would think there would be a huge public health campaign to finally put an end to the mysterious plague that silently kills as many as one in four humans before they even have the chance to get heartbeats! But there is not. And now I am tired.

MEGAN: My sister's fiancé was just asking when I was going to bed. I could stop drinking and try that out.

MOE: Yeah this is the longest Crappy Hour ever already I think. I've been drinking really slow and am still tired and I think that is a sign.

MEGAN: Ok, so, I'll check you at an abortion-esque ungodly hour on Tuesday.

MOE: Oh, but that David Gregory story was awesome.

MEGAN: There's nothing like embarrassing oneself in a Starbucks full of Republicans to make embarrassing oneself on the Internet seem totes minor.

Related:

Us Weekly Editor: 'I Care' About Celebrity News [ABCNews]

(Click image above to enlarge)

Anna: T-shirt from late '80s/high school era: $0; sweatpants from Danskin, bought in 2001: $40, American Apparel boy-short underwear: $12; American Apparel camisole with built-in "bra": $30. Total: $82.
Dodai: T-shirt, old navy, $12.50; underwear, American Eagle, $7.50; bra, wWacoal, $62; Rolex - inherited; no pants; no jewelry. (This is a tragic day.) Total: $82
Tracie: Jeans: $200; top: $80; Chucks: $40; Earrings: $2. Total: $322.
Moe: Jeans - $100 or something on some sale; dress over jeans was left at my house by a houseguest. No accessories or shoes duh. Total: Approx. $100
Jennifer: Black camisole that got as birthday gift, $0; gray thermal American Apparel hot shorts, $14; neon orange PINK by Victoria's secret cropped sweats that got in swag bag at Victoria's Secret show last year: $0. Total: $14

Tracie wins! Followed by "I own one bag" Moe.

How Much Money Are You Wearing Today? [Fashionista]
Earlier: Angelina Jolie's "Peanuts" Gallery Of Back To School Outfits

• Ken's path to crappitude began, as so many of them do, with the authorship of a masturbatory memoir (mammoir?) about his travails with being born kind of not totally a man.
• Matt Damon would play him in the movie, natch.
• He and the wife had an infant, which required a nanny.
• He realized he wanted the nanny to make him an infant of their own.
• And texted her to say he wanted to see her "pregnant with pigtails."
• He then began texting Paris Hilton on her famous Sidekick, and she became a loyal source.
• Possibly of blowjobs?
• He determined the Paris Hilton sex tape Jill had come into possession of was too vulgar for the magazine to cover.
• "But why don't you deliver it to the office anyway?"
• Upon watching the film, he deemed it worthy of his publication, though he did not deem Jill worthy of crediting with the scoop, or really anything else she came up with.
• And when she got promoted anyway, Baker responded by promoting his name to a place on the masthead just south of Janice Min's. And hiring his beloved wet nurse — er, nanny — to work as a reporter in his office, at which point his advances began to piss off the paparazzi photographers she was dating.
• So he directed his staff to start sleeping with paparazzi to make up for it.
• Pretty soon everyone in Los Angeles was swapping bodily fluids and Us Weekly passwords. Some reporters decided it was time to leave.
• This displeased Baker, who decided the departure of a reporter for OK! was a matter for the FBI.
• Then it was time to write another book.
• For which he would, naturally, have to throw a party, at hateful Beverly Hills celebquarters Kitson, paid for with $70,000 in free advertising space in US Weekly.
• Then Jill herself left, further inciting Baker's wrath. "I will destroy you," he promised.
• And commenced a year-long sting operation aimed at trapping the reporter into stealing company secrets.
• That culminated in a violent FBI raid on her house.
• And yes, that would be the same FBI that still can't tell us where the anthrax came from.

Last we heard from Ken he was talking to NPR about how great he was and how the mainstream media could stand to learn a thing or two from him and the ways of US Weekly, like maybe what it would be like if the love child of Richard Nixon and Ted Bundy worked at a celebrity tabloid.

*Yes, all this is based on the allegations of Jill Ishkanian, who is now suing Us for $55 million, and there are two sides to every story, and yeah we realize that if any of them are true we are virtually inviting the FBI to raid our house. We're hiding our stash now.

On or about July 2005 BAKER entered JILL ISHKANIAN's office, closed the door and began to cry. During this conversation BAKER used up all of JILL ISHKANIAN's Kleenex to wipe his eyes and runny nose.

During the raid, twelve F.B.I. agents in flak jackets entered JILL ISHKANIAN's home with their guns drawn and held their guns to JILL ISHKANIAN's head and to the head of JILL ISHKANIAN's boyfriend. 118. JILL ISHKANIAN and her boyfriend were placed into handcuffs, removed from their home and placed into a police vehicle. They were never arrested nor taken to any other location during the more than two hour raid.

A Very Long Lawsuit [Jossip]

Oh yeah. This LA Times article about how everyone in Hollywood is freaky skinny is kind of like that, with all of the actresses in Hollywood as the sorority girls who are suffering from the "contagion" effects of living in such an image-conscious world ("It's very easy for the person to say, 'All my fellow actresses are not eating. They are losing weight, so I want to lose weight too," says one therapist. "Sometimes they show each other the tricks.") and Jodie Foster as the obnoxious thin girl who denies she's ever had a problem ("Coming out of the '60s and the feminist revolution, Foster says, she can't imagine going 'down that route. You wouldn't want anyone to think they owned you or want someone to only talk about your body...This new generation is not of that era.") Us Weekly's Janice Min is the bitchy-but-realistic head of the sorority ("You don't want to be the one actress whose photo is taken with two skinny actresses and you look like Shrek") and the writer, Rachel Abramowitz is like the plumber, dredging up the same ugly problem we all know exists but no one can really do anything about, except be really grossed out.
The Skinny On Hollywood [LA Times, sub req'd]

Every time we see Janice Min, we think "Lordy, she is just like us!" Except, you know, a millionaire. And also, she probably showered today. But anyway, the point is, we've seen her a few times (once even in person!) at this point, and the thing about Janice is that she doesn't ever seem to think celebrities are particularly imporant! And sometimes she slacks off, like this week, when her "editor's letter" was either 69 or 70 words long, depending on whether Jamie-Lynn Sigler counts as two or three words. (That's right! She hearts the Sopranos! Just like...well, everyone else we know!)

In the above interview with MTV cutie Su-Chin Pak (which refrains from any negative coverage of vodka sponsor Absolut) the two gals come off like any two sweetly Type-A Asian women chatting over lunch, possibly about a marketing conference they'll be attending next month or some HBS case study they'll be solving next period or maybe like some drug they are developing for some biotech firm, like something you wouldn't even stop to eavesdrop on if you passed their table because it is that boring and unsexy, and.... Well, no. They're actually talking about the business of covering celebrities. Which is, it turns out, um, kind of boring.

Before Janice Min Goes On Holiday, She Defends Bonnie Fuller [Jossip]

Problem is, most women know that things like, say, divorces (Reese) and parental deaths (Angelina) are events that cause grief. And these same women know that with grief, comes weight-loss. It's a law of the universe. The same way that Russell Crowe = total fucktard.

There are, of course, the few girls who eat more when they're unhappy, but that's usually a consequence of low-level dysthymia, not full blown, can-I-make-it-through-the-day? despair. It's the latter that causes weight loss: the quick, severe, I-look-so-hot-yet-feel-so-bad type of anguish. Everyone woman we know says that she never feels worse - or looks hotter in a pair of tight jeans - than after the end of a serious relationship. Fucked up, that.

So, just a brief note to Janice Min and Bonnie Fuller: "diets" and "anorexia" suggest some sort of choice in the matter (or the intervention of Rachel Zoe); they give the impression of willful starvation or drug-use that inevitably leads to treatment for exhaustion or consultation with a nutritionist (see Richie, Nicole; Olsen, Mary Kate). This ain't that.

We salute you Jennifer Aniston - you truly know how to fuck with the celebrity weeklies!

Lest we forget, this is the woman who carefully engineered a bunch of beachside 'loving' photos with then hubby Brad Pitt AFTER the pair had decided to divorce, waited for all the celebrity weeklies to come out with cover stories on their romantic reunion and then announced the split the day most of them hit newstands across the country. Remember "It's Baby Time!" from that paragon of truth, Star Magazine? Delicious.

Well she's done it again. Okay, it's lower key this time, so don't expect Janice Min to describe the breakup as 'our tsunami', but by letting the news slip late on a Tuesday night, she wrongfoots ALL the weekly celeb mags, who close their pages on Monday. Except People Magazine, who can be expected to have the break-up on their cover with all the sycophantic greasiness you'd expect from them. Expect major catch-up next week.

Bravo! Current score: Jen Aniston: 2 Celebrity weeklies: 0