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Filing from the bar of Husk restaurant in the Holy City – this is Fishbowl Charleston. As the state prepares to vote in the GOP primary this Saturday, we trudged through the beautiful weather and fine dining to bring you a report from the front lines.

Our Thursday began with a slow start when the closest thing we could find to a D.C. celebrity was Bob Livingston, disgraced former Speaker-designate of the House, trolling radio row of the Southern Republic Leadership Council at the TD Arena. Once we left, we saw a blurry eyed John Roberts from Fox News entering the arena, presumably for J.C. Watts‘s speech to the Council. Walking back to the hotel, we spotted Perry Bacon, from the Grio in an animated phone conversation outside of iconic Charleston restaurant, Jestine’s Kitchen. Considering we saw a reporter named Bacon outside of a restaurant well known for it’s pork laden dishes, we were quite pleased with ourselves.

After an uneventful afternoon, we decided to spice things up with a Rick Santorum speech. Upon arriving, we saw pundit extraordinaire, Michael Barone. While chatting with him, we ALMOST missed the diminutive Lindsey Graham, on his way to fire up the DOZENS of people who had showed up to see the “Sweater Vest of Truth”, Santorum.

Oh, and Perry Bacon was THERE, too. Before Santorum began his speech, we were treated to the arrival of Herman Cain himself. We were tipped off when we saw THIS guy hanging around outside, cigarette firmly ensconced in his mouth, naturally.

That’s right, Mark Block is BACK. We asked him if he tires of posing with his now famous cigarettes. He says he’s “gotten used to it,” but one person in New York recently asked him to SIGN a cigarette butt. The most interesting part of the Mark Block story is that when we made our way into the arena, he sat down just a few seats away from Josh Kraushaar from National Journal. It wasn’t long ago that Block famously butchered the relationship of Kraushaar to Cain sexual harassment accuser KAREN Kraushaar in the news. Block claimed on Fox News that she was Josh’s mother. (They aren’t related at all.) We asked him about that incident when it happened.

Kraushaar even acknowledged the weirdness on Twitter.

Mark Block a couple rows back in crowd as Herman Cain readying to address audience. Still haven’t heard from him since the Hannity botch.

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) January 19, 2012

We settled into our seats in the arena, which wasn’t hard. The place was nearly empty. We’ll give a conservative estimate and say there were roughly 150 people there. Easily half were reporters. As we settled in, we noticed a loud rustling behind us and turned to spot 11 members of the Duggar family, from TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, filing in to catch the Santorum address.

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WaPo recently launched a new blog called “She The People” headed up by Melinda Henneberger with the tagline “The world as women see it.” God, I hope not.

I realize men have no idea how women think, but vaginas can’t make this much of a difference between what happens in the mind of the opposite sex. If they do, women don’t think about the economy or jobs, but about the questions no one else does, like “Would we love Tim Tebow if he were Muslim?” and almost obsessively about Republican Presidential candidates…and not much else.

Do women care that deeply about candidate’s spouses and ex-spouses? “She The People” bloggers do since they write about them more than the National Enquirer.

They do take a slight break from time to time to kiss up to first lady Michelle Obama almost as much as The Hill‘s Amie Parnes, so there’s that.

Aside from staying lock-step with the Post’s predominately liberal blog bias (sure, there’s exceptions), this is a painful blog to read. I hope women think about things beyond this. To steal a catch phrase, you’ve come a long way, baby, but this blog ain’t helping the cause.

The NYT is taking cues from Politico when it comes to constant self-promotion. FishbowlDC was alerted to a live chat with Jodi Kantor through the Facebook page for the NYT. Kantor is promoting her new book, The Obamas, in which she gets behind-the-scenes tales within the Obama White House. Earlier, we reported on Kantor’s boastful tone regarding the book and the negative reception she’s facing from the Washington Press Corps.

Facebook fans of the NYT were not thrilled about being subjected to a live chat and let Kantor know it. One fan, Kevin Kretz, began the conversation by bluntly saying, “Would sure like the NYT FB posts to be about breaking or significant news instead of daily plugs for a book by a Times writer.” This was the first of many nastygrams. Another commenter, Miriam Rubinoff wondered, “Why do I imagine a lot of hate comments being blocked?” To their credit, the NYT responded directly to Rubinoff in the comment section.

“Following up on your question, here’s a reminder of our moderation policy on Facebook. We aim to create a space on Facebook.com/NYTimes where readers can exchange intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information. We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point politely. A few things we won’t tolerate on our Facebook wall: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes) and commercial promotion. While most comments will remain posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can.”

So, they won’t tolerate ANY commercial promotion. You know.  Stuff like this:

“In a few minutes, New York Times political reporter Jodi Kantor will be chatting here live about her new book, The Obamas.”

Just to be clear: The NYT is OPPOSED to any and all commercial promotion…  Unless, of course, it’s their own products.

Fans of The Hill‘s French-American journalist Julian Pecquet will be pleased to learn that soon he’ll move from the Healthwatch blog to a new foreign policy blog that will launch later this month.

In a memo from Editor-in-Chief Hugo Gurdon, he says of Julian: “He has done a great job on Healthwatch, to which he brought detailed policy expertise. But foreign policy has always been his passion, ever since he was in the French diplomatic corps in 1999-2000. So this is a perfect fit for Julian and it’s very pleasing that an internal move allows us to fill a new position with a reporter whose talents we already know well. Thanks, Hugo”

Sure, it’s nice to get a shout-out from a GOP Presidential hopeful like Newt Gingrich during a presidential debate with the entire nation watching. This is the same Gingrich who has demeaned nearly all the debate moderators that he has faced down in recent months. In the weekend debates, however, he had praise. For the NYT. For WaPo, specifically bringing up that Super PAC Restore our Future ad on Gingrich that earned four Pinocchios. Glenn Kessler awards the Pinocchios in his fact-checking column.

While Kessler should have been delighted by the praise being heaped on him not only from Gingrich but colleagues who knew the candidate was referring to his work, he couldn’t help but thrash him by pointing out something the former Speaker forgot to mention.

“Thanks for the shout-out, Speaker Gingrich!” he wrote on Twitter. “But to be fair, we have also given you Four Pinocchios from time to time. #nbcfbdebate.”

Kessler, when asked for comment, said he was just having fun on Twitter. But he also questioned if Gingrich deserved it, asking us, “You don’t think it was a fair thing to say?”

The S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse U. is currently accepting entrants for the second Annual Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting. The prize, which carries a $5,000 dollar reward, honors Robin Toner, the first woman to become national political correspondent for the NYT. It is rewarded for the best strictly political reporting in print, broadcast and online. Commentary pieces are not eligible. Last year, Craig Harris from The Arizona Republic won for his eight-part series on a broken public pension plan in the state.

You can submit a piece at the Toner Program’s website. Charlotte Grimes, Professor & Knight Chair in Political Reporting at Syracuse, tells FishbowlDC, “The winner is notified in late February, after all the judging. And the award is [given at a] ceremony at the Newhouse School on March 26.” So make your late winter plans accordingly. The deadline for submission is January 14.

WaPo has gone fishing– for compliments.

The paper is asking readers “to vote on your favorite” original Post content in not one, not two, but six separate categories in a new survey. Actually it’s seven categories; “graphics” and “motion graphics” have conveniently been separated so they can get an extra compliment.

We only have one favorite and it’s under the “social and engagement” category: squirrel week.

Wait, nevermind! That link doesn’t work. Tricked us! Unfortunately, there’s nowhere in the survey to vote for “worst WashingtonPost.com feature.” We would all too readily select “The whole stupid site.”

But just because they didn’t include that poll doesn’t mean we can’t. Here you go:

UPDATE: The “squirrel week” link began working shortly after this post was published.

Donald Trump is practically a walking headline with hair. Headlines all but write themselves when he’s in the news. But somehow when he decided Tuesday that he wouldn’t host the Republican debate with Newsmax set for later this month, the media ran the most bland headlines ever.

Politico, CNN.com and NJ all ran nearly identical headlines: “Trump pulls out of moderating debate” (Politico), “Trump pulls out of debate” (CNN.com) and “Trump pulls out as debate moderator” (NJ).

Even worse were LAT, USA Today and TWT. Looks like they, too, had a meeting on how to make the news as flat as possible: “Donald Trump bows out as GOP debate moderator” (LAT), “Donald Trump bows out as GOP debate moderator” (USA Today), and “Trump bows out of Newsmax debate” (TWT).

At least “pulls out” sounds gross.

The only D.C.-based publication that gave even the slightest effort was WaPo and they went for the obvious: “Trump fires himself as debate moderator.”

Everyone should have taken a tip from the Drudge Report. “Trump Dumps” was the headline there. That’s also gross, but it rhymes and that’s something.

See how one Washington protestor makes use of a Politico‘s newspaper dispenser this afternoon.

(Thanks to HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney, who retweeted the above photograph posted by @emmzee, a D.C.-based woman with a bird’s-eye view of Occupy Washington.)

WaPo‘s Ombudsman Patrick Pexton has declared that whatever liberal blogger/news reporter/Democratic activist Ezra Klein did at a recent briefing of top Democratic Senate aides was not “evil.”

In fact, he says it wasn’t a “briefing” at all. That’s what Klein declared. That’s what three Democratic chiefs of staff with whom he spoke said. Case closed, right?

Maybe. But not so fast. In Pexton’s story published late Friday afternoon is the news that the briefing (or whatever people are calling them these days) was in fact a “private meeting” of Democratic chiefs of staff to discuss “strategy, coordination and policy.” At some point they supposedly stopped the “private strategy meeting” and invited in Klein. Did they pound a gavel and declare, “Strategy Session Over” and let Klein in the thick wooden doors? It’s so normal, they say, that they’ve done this in the past, with WaPo‘s Chris Cillizza or NBC’s Chuck Todd. Interesting to note that neither Cillizza nor Todd came forward when Klein was being criticized for participating in the so-called non-briefing and non-strategy session. One chief of staff, however, declares the idea that Klein would “brief” them as “absurd.”

The ombudsman notes that Klein’s blurred role as a reporter whose opinionated work appears on WaPo‘s news pages is something that bothers his colleagues and “makes reporters in the Post newsroom, and readers, uncomfortable.”

Pexton’s report adds up to a whole lot of new, unanswered questions. If the briefing/strategy session/séance is so innocent, why are the contents still a mystery? Klein says the meeting was a way to develop sources, something all reporters in Washington do. But talking with a group of Senate aides who have supposedly blended a strategy session into a undisclosed off-the-record meeting with a reporter in the Capitol? That is not something all reporters do.

“Evil” may be overkill and not a word we’ve ever used to described Klein. We’ll reserve that for Gargamel (the sworn enemy of the Smurfs) and Osama Bin Laden. But unusual and likely unethical behavior for a reporter, aides and WaPo? Now that’s right on target.

Read Pexton’s story here.