TABLOIDED: Super Tuesday Hangover

We're hoping that today marks the end of the wraps and inserts for both papers because after three days of this craziness, it's exhausting. The Daily News is brimming with special sections: a 32-page wrap on the Giants victory parade, a Black History Month tribute to Percy Sutton and Shirley Chisholm, the female African-American presidential candidate who was "Before Hillary and Obama." The Post features a 20-page insert on the parade.

The wrap puts the Daily News in the tricky position of fêting sports and merely mentioning the Super Tuesday election with a "Super Tuesday Coverage Inside" button in the lower right-hand corner. Remember yesterday when we noted that black and white connotes "dinosaur" in the newspaper business? Well, the Daily News may as well have put out some Flintstones-style stone tablets this morning with their all-B-&-W "second front page" on the election. You'd think it was 1988, and we were talking about Gore vs. Dukakis.

The parade coverage in both papers tends toward the typical: yay for the underdogs, we're the Greatest City in the World, etc. Mike Lupica pulls out the old "my, downtown has changed since 9/11" chestnut with his column, as he observes (through a quote from a cop), "First time since the attack that we had people down here, at least like this." The "Joy now reigns where terrible tears once fell" headline drives the obvious point home.

The photos from the parade may follow common themes, but there are some fabulous ones. One of our favorites is from the Daily News, in which a kid is buried in the "tickertape." We can only imagine that poor child's mother yelling, "What are you doing? Don't you know that this street is filthy?!" The photo of Michael Strahan jumping for joy at the rally is fabulous in both color and black and white. The News asks if Eli Manning is the new Derek Jeter. Last time we checked, Manning was shacking up in Hoboken with his college sweetheart, not on the prowl for women like Jessica Alba and Mariah Carey. We think Jeter and the hated Tom Brady might have a little more in common, tabloid headline-wise.

Of course, there was more happening yesterday than a parade celebrating one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. There was some sort of election? As we predicted, the lack of a definitive Hillary Clinton victory feeds the "Obama momentum" narrative, as the News declares "THIS AIN'T OVER." We get wacky photos of Hillary in both papers, although, as usual, the Post's is the one that has her the most wild-eyed. What are they going to do if she loses and goes back to being a boring ol' senator?

One thing Hillary is, apparently, is Andrea Peyser's "home girl." In her jaw-dropping column today, Peyser interviews voters in Harlem and comes up with the shocking premise that not every African-American is voting for Obama. This earth-shattering bit of news includes the awful designation of Clinton as a "home girl" and the admission that Peyser herself voted for Clinton.

Coverage of the Republicans is a little more subdued, for the tabloids. Perhaps it's because John McCain was the big winner, as he "cream[ed] Romney all over the map," according to the Post. A friend pointed out to us his theory that Mitt Romney is the last Cylon, and the pictures of him in the papers are prime evidence of his robotic demeanor. One columnist who does get a little het up over the McCain win is Charles Hurt, who opines that McCain will veer left in the general election, forcing "true" conservatives to become "suicide voters" for Clinton come November.

Odds & Ends
There are other bits of tabloidy goodness today. Both the Post and the News cover the latest in the Britney Spears trainwreck, which is that the pop star's mother has filed a restraining order against Osama "Sam" Lutfi, Spears's manager. Lynne Spears alleges that Lutfi demeaned Spears, calling her "trash" and a "whore," cut her contact with the outside world and was dosing her with numerous anti-psychotic drugs. This story is the worst of Fat Elvis and Brian Wilson's days with his "doctor" rolled into one. The interesting part is how the papers insist on calling Lutfi "Osama." He is known as "Sam," but reminding people of Public Enemy Number One helps to demonize Lutfi even further, if that actually is possible. The News includes a loony, cross-eyed picture of Britney with Osama from her 26th birthday party.

The other great sensational story today is in the Post, which tells of two school secretaries in the Bronx who $windled (yes, there's a $ headline) $200,000 from PS 132 to buy such important items as cigarettes, beer and "World's Greatest Grandma" T-shirts.

HEADLINES: "Art World Regains a War-haul" in the Post. An Andy Warhol dollar sign (see, it's all connected) painting stolen from a Soho gallery in 1998 shows up at Christies.

"Victoria's secret puts ex on defensive" in the Daily News. More coverage of the feds' attempts to get money from Victoria Gotti's ex-husband. Apparently Carmine Agnello has not paid any of the divorce judgment.