BABY MAMA TABLOID DRAMA New York Daily News

Slate's Today's Papers: Daniel Politi notes that the major newspapers are leading with Hurricane Gustav, which declined to re-destroy the un-rebuilt New Orleans. The tabloids, however, lead with Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin and her vast love of babies. Politi also notes that both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have page one pieces on how much vetting the John McCain camp did of Palin—"All signs point to one answer: not very thoroughly at all," he writes. (In fact, they mostly just Googled and Nexis'd her.) Politi ends with noting that the Washington Post carries a story about a gene variant that affects monogamy in men!

NY1's "In The Papers": Cheery morning Canuck Pat Kiernan announces the arrival of the post-Labor Day season with a gray suit and a blue tie. Kiernan calls the New York Daily News' "Gran Ol' Party" the winning headline of the day, noting they describe Palin-daughter-lover Levi as "hunky." Also noted: U.S. Open sidebar story on page 18, that they go through 70,000 balls at the tennis to-do and that a White Plains classroom uses tennis balls to reduce screeching on chairs. "As is the custom of the Times," Kiernan said, when stories are gossipy, that paper "backs into the story" of the Palin pregnancy. "Great piece today about the kosher gadget industry," says Pat, also in the Times. The Sun, says Kiernan, reports that Barack Obama has been "particularly reluctant" to release his Columbia transcripts. And in the WSJ, TV Land has already showed its viewers reruns "a million times" and people are hungry for original programming. In Newsday, a "strange murder," a 100-year-old woman killed. In the Post, he notes that he "can't think of something that's been more bungled than this cellphone thing"—now there's a plan to have cellphone lockers in schools but they can't get it together. And he notes that David Duchovny has not been cheating on his wife but has been "searching Internet porn" too much—"way too much really."

Gawker's Gossip Roundup: Whew, there is not so much gossip on the day after Labor Day, reports night editor Ryan Tate. Apparently Kevin Spacey pulled down someone's boxers on a Croatian nightclub floor and Helen Mirren has done some coke. Most of you did the same thing this weekend, so where's the pleasure in the gossip?