Unlike the earth-mother types who cook their own afterbirth, hoping to combat postpartum depression and increase milk flow, Stein's wife hires a pro. "To my surprise, Sara did not look unkempt, frumpy, heavy or in any way like a Wiccan," writes Stein with typical charm. For $275, the full-time placenta cook will prepare and dry it and turn it into pills - much more palatable, as she explains to the aghast new dad, than the "placenta smoothies" some new moms slurp.

Here's how Stein describes the placenta, which he carries home in a cooler:

Though I am exceedingly squeamish, when my son was born, I was shocked that I saw only the beauty of childbirth. Until the placenta came out. There are many normal human reactions to seeing a placenta, ranging from screaming to vomiting to warding it off with a cross. For those of you who have never seen one, the placenta is to the baby what Stephen Baldwin is to Alec Baldwin. It's what your liver would look like if it got into an accident on the autobahn with one of those aliens from Mars Attacks! and their bloody carcasses threw jellyfish at each other.

Sara, required by law to cook the placenta in the home, steams it with herbs, dehydrates it, and delivers the pills "in a pretty glass jar, [with] a card, a CD of lullabies and a satin pouch. In which was part of my son's umbilical cord, fashioned into a heart." Now, as I told Anna, Joel Stein and placenta-cookery are a combination fairly guaranteed to make my stomach roil. And I was not "disappointed," if that's the word for having one's worst fears confirmed. Nudge-nudge old-school wife-indulging with a dollop of VH1-level snark is hard to take in the best of circumstances. And when it's combined with placentophagy - "the kitchen got that ironlike smell of cooked organ meat, with vague undertones of a consciousness-raising group and a Betty Friedan rally" - the results call for, in my case, a piece of dry toast and some Canada Dry.

Afterbirth For Dinner [Time]

Earlier: Is Sharing Placenta The Recipe For Sisterly Bonding?

Save Some Womb For Dessert

First of all, there's no longer a shame attached to being a nerd. Anyone who has been paying any attention to American pop culture over the past 5 years knows that the complete opposite is taking place: nerds, once the butt of every joke, are no longer the pocket-protector wearing laughingstocks of society. Nerds, geeks, dweebs, and yes, even neomaxizoomdweebies are cool, thanks to the rise in Nerd Chic, with comic book movies raking in the big bucks at the box office, hipsters rocking thick black frames, nerd heroes popping up all over television, and obnoxious jocks, once the epitome of cool, finding themselves in the Douchebag Zone, where all high school glories go to die.

More importantly, Stein fails to recognize that any nerdiness Obama may show is probably a good thing: it means he's smart, that he's most likely down to earth, and that he, like most nerds, can probably laugh at himself. Still, any nerd qualities that Obama has are drowned out by his unshakeable coolness; the man has had everything under the sun thrown at him over the past two years, and has consistently displayed an ability to remain calm, cool, and collected under pressure.

Stein ends his article with this: "Of course, it's also possible that while our society is ready to accept a black President, it still clings to a treasured stereotype: that all black people are cool and all nerds are white," which makes NO sense at all when you consider that he spent the first three paragraphs of the article trying to tie Barack Obama to the most famous nerd of the 90's: Steve Urkel himself, who, of course, was also black.

I recognize this is Stein's attempt to be funny, but seriously, does anybody, anywhere on earth, look at Barack Obama and see Steve Urkel? The only remotely close comparison, if you're gonna take it there, is to reference Urkel's cool, calm, smooth alter ego, Stephan Urquelle, who was so rad that even Laura Winslow fell in love with him. Otherwise, this is a pop culture epic fail.

You call yourself a nerd, Joel Stein, but you seem to be a bit out of touch with the rest of us. (I say this as a blogging librarian who is also a level 47 arcane fire mage in World of Warcraft and who is currently writing this post on her Mac, which is named "The Hemulen" after a Moomintroll character, so please, do not mess.) Barack Obama is going to do just fine on Tuesday, as nerds, dweebs, jocks, geeks, homecoming queens, stoners, dropouts, and valedictorians alike head to the polls to support him. Oh, and Joel? Barack wanted me to send you this:

Can Obama Overcome The Urkel Effect? [Time]

Earlier: American Wit Joel Stein: "Feminism Demands That I Objectify Palin"

First of all, you think it's absolutely hilarious to call attractive male politicians gay! In today's piece, you say, "American men know how to deal with male politicians. When they're good-looking, we call them gay. When they're not, we call them 'distinguished-looking' or 'Joe Lieberman.'" Such rapier wit has seldom been found outside a vomit-stained frat basement. What's even sadder is that this isn't even original hackery from you. When you wrote about how to make fun of Obama, you said, "He's well-dressed…He may only be half-black, but he's three-quarters gay." ROTFL indeed!

Okay, now let's get to the meat of your assertions about Palin's sexiness. Stein says, "In fact, what's sexist is men's fear of sexualizing the women we take seriously," which would be a good point, if you didn't preface that statement by writing, "When she posed for Vogue last year, Palin said of the media, 'I wish they'd stick with the issues instead of discussing my black go-go boots.' A good method of getting reporters to do that, of course, is to not pose for Vogue or talk about your go-go boots. Still, I understand her point. Which is that she wears go-go boots." Oh Joel, you clearly take Palin incredibly seriously…as an object.

Then there's the flat-out-insulting pretending to be "funny." "In the last few years — for reasons I assume have to do with either yoga, organic food or advice from Dr. Oz — women in their 40s and 50s have gotten truly, deeply hot. Madonna hot. Demi Moore hot. Stifler's mom hot. In 1990, the only way a woman could have had five kids and still look like Palin was to have been knocked up in high school with quintuplets," you write. It's a double whammy of ists! Sexist and ageist! Well played.

So now is where I will say one thing in defense of this mostly-fucked up attempt at funniness. "I would like to live in a world in which young men dream about sex with a woman who is vice president instead of whatever job it is that Kim Kardashian holds," Stein writes. And to be honest, we'd like to live in that world too! A woman can both be attractive and powerful, and we'd love to live in a world where the highest levels of success add to a woman's allure, instead of subtracting from it.

Unfortunately, just as you said up top, you're far more focused on Sarah Palin's go-go boots than you are on her fiscal policy (even though you claim to be a fan of the latter as well!). And that, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with this campaign: people are far more concerned with all the superficial trappings of Palin than they are with what's going on behind those rimless glasses.

Real Vice Presidents Can Have Curves [LAT]

Earlier: Joel Stein: American Original
And Now All The Bloggers Hate Joel Stein
Every Day Is Slutoween

The thing about Clooney is that he knows how to play the game properly. "You don't say, I don't talk about my personal life," he explains. "People say they won't talk about their personal life. And then they do. And even when the tabloids say really crappy things and it pisses you off and you know it's not true, you have to at least publicly have a sense of humor about it." He's extremely passionate about his campaign to stop the genocide in Darfur: "I've been very depressed since I got back. I'm terrified that it isn't in any way helping. That bringing attention can cause more damage. You dig a well or build a health-care facility and they're a target for somebody," he says. "A lot more people know about Darfur, but absolutely nothing is different. Absolutely nothing." And yet, he can find a silver lining: "I have a U.N. passport. It says 'Messenger of Peace' on it. It's very cool," he says.

During his dinner with Stein, some sort of alarm goes off. Clooney proceeds to scour the house for the source, and even goes into Stein's dusty, musty crawlspace. (There's video!) He finds nothing, but then when the beeping starts again, he discovers it's the carbon monoxide detector in an outlet near the table. "Either it needs a battery," he says, "or we have six seconds to live."

And yet: Even this funny, charming, practically perfect star is not good enough for Hollywood's standards: behold how someone PhotoShopped the hell out of Clooney in the promotional shots for his upcoming film, Leatherheads. If George Clooney isn't good enough just the way he is, what is this world coming to?

George Clooney: The Last Movie Star [Time]
By George! Mr. Clooney Receives The Airbrush Touch [Daily Mail]

Men's sex dreams were twice as likely to involve trysts with multiple partners, and were more likely to take place in public. Women were twice as likely to dream about sex with public figures, according to the researchers.

She's Gotta Have It — In Her Dreams [ABCNews]