There are few things on the Internet that are as delightful as Marty Rudolf. The Twitter icon fishes for conversation with people from all walks of life, and every now and then, he gets a response. The more entertaining exchanges make it into our feature we like to call, “Marty’d.”

One recent example was when Marty asked Buzzfeed’s DC Bureau Chief, John Stanton, “Hello John, Describe what it’s like Being the DC Bureau Chief at Buzzfeed.com? I’m a Political News Junkie Online!” Stanton took the time to reply that it was “loads of fun,” even when he has to edit Evan McMorris-Santoro.

But it was a recent conversation with a Fishbowl Favorite that really caught our attention.  Read more

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with Dana Perino, part of “The Five” on Fox News. These days, her twitter feed is nothing more than one long love letter to her pooch, Jasper. Even when she’s not tweeting about Jasper, she still finds a way to crowbar him in like she did earlier this week, when she tweeted, “Was asked today by a fellow dog owner at the park what I read. He was dead serious. So I told him the truth: tweets. Lots & lots of tweets.” Yes, Dana.  We get it. You love your dog.

That message has clearly been received by fans of “The Five,” because there is an account on Twitter devoted to making photoshops of the  hosts. One common subject that seems to come up over and over again is, you guessed it, JASPER! Just take a look at that cringeworthy “movie poster” for Lincoln starring Jasper Perino.

Oh, but it gets WAY worse.  Read more

Did you know that Dana Perino has a dog named Jasper? If you didn’t know that, then you clearly aren’t following her on Twitter because that’s the ONLY thing she ever talks about. You would think that someone as well-rounded as Dana would have other things to talk about, besides her child dog, but apparently not.

In fact, on a recent episode of FNC’s The Five, Dana unveiled a love song she’d written to the pup. It’s sung to the tune of “Take it Easy” by The Eagles…  Sort of. You can feel Dana’s embarrassment as she tries to squeak a few lines of the odd tune dedicated to her hound.

Watch the video…  If you dare. Read more

Breitbart’s Sonnie Johnson spins a folksy yarn about a recent conversation she had with her daughter after school one day. In her story,titled “How Dana Perino Saved My Daughter,” she says her daughter got off the bus and let her know that she “schooled” her teacher that day. I already don’t like this kid. No one likes a know-it-all,OK kid? Just do your homework, study for your tests and leave your teacher alone.

How did the little girl “school” her teacher? Johnson’s daughter says, “We were talking about Ancient Mali and I told her they made money from salt, gold, and slavery,” and “when the teacher questioned her about “the slave trade” she said, “yeah, Africans were selling slaves to Arabs long before the white man.” Ooohhh….  SICK BURN, little kid.

Wait, what doesFNC’s Dana Perino have to do with this whole thing? Read more

On FNC’s “The O’Reilly Factor” last night, host Bill O’Reilly‘s “tip of the day” segment took a big stab at Talking Points Memo‘s Benjy Sarlin. Or, as O’Reilly calls him, “BENNN-GEE.”

“Remember, there are no standards in cyberspace,” O’Reilly said, cautioning viewers to be skeptical of what they see online.

He used a post by Sarlin as an example –  a writeup on Sen. Marco Rubio‘s (R-Fla.) recent appearance on the show. It referenced a well-known exchange on illegal immigrants and drunk driving between O’Reilly and his FNC colleague Geraldo Rivera. Sarlin described O’Reilly as “a host who once got into an on-air screaming match with Geraldo Rivera over whether to blame drunk driving deaths on illegal immigration.”

According to O’Reilly, it was an unfair characterization. “This is a complete lie,” he said. “Everybody’s seen that chat I had with Rivera. It was about illegal-alien crime. violent crime. That’s what it was about.” He continued, “So, Benjy knows that. But he’s lying.”

At least they put up a nice photo of Sarlin while shoving a boot up his ass.

O’Reilly went on to say… Read more

A story by New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman Monday left readers with the impression that FNC was stifling debate on gun control in light of the Sandy Hook shooting. But subsequent stories and coverage of the issue concerning FNC have shown that’s actually not the case.

“It’s by no means universal,” Sherman told FishbowlDC. “It’s more nuanced. They’re just taking a low-key approach.”

Sherman’s initial story said FNC’s weekend producer David Clark had instructed lower producers not to broach gun control, given the current sensitivity of the subject. Despite the email, gun control was discussed several different times that weekend (13 times, by Jeff Poor‘s count at The Daily Caller). Stories in both The Hollywood Reporter and The Daily Caller pointed these instances out, though Sherman’s story did as well.

Since then, a few seemingly contradictory events have taken place in the FNC world… Read more

You could probably win a case in court that FNC, for better or worse, is by far the most interesting cable news channel on television. Ranker’s end-of-year “Top 12 Fox News Fails of 2012” only lends credibility to the argument.

Browsing through the list, we reminisced about what this year brought us from FNC. We laughed. We cried. We laughed a little more. Then we pulled out our top three favorites.

1. Fox & Friends Gets Punkd

In mid September Max Rice, a “recent college grad” came on the network to explain why he was supporting Mitt Romney, introduced himself to the nation with one word: “Sup.” It was all downhill from there. Rice called show co-host Gretchen Carlson “Miss U.S.A.” when she’s actually former Miss America. He sipped a cup of something on set. He said he met President Obama “in third grade,” which had absolutely nothing to do with anything. The interview ended with him saying… Read more

New York mag’s Gabriel Sherman caused an explosion on the level of Three Mile Island Monday by reporting that FNC weekend Executive Producer David Clark had emailed producers with instruction not to do any segments on gun control. The report came just after the Sandy Hook killing spree at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Friday.

After a follow-up story by The Hollywood Reporter challenging the accuracy of Sherman’s piece, FNC Contributor Brit Hume demanded that Sherman issue a correction. “The Hollywood Reporter story covers a lot more than Fox News Sunday, & demolishes your original story,” Hume tweeted to Sherman. “Time for a correction.”

Try as it might, THR‘s story doesn’t exactly change anything about Sherman’s original report. It does cite “Fox News insiders’ (which Sherman cited in his own story, though surely different ones ) who dispute the charge, noting that Fox News Sunday hosted a discussion on gun policy.

Sherman’s story, however, also stated that fact.

The big development in THR‘s story comes at the very end… Read more

Since departing The Daily Caller, Michelle Fields has kept a low profile. You can still catch her on TV every now and then, but she has focused her efforts into her own website, www.MichelleFields.com. It’s a shame, because we miss the fan art that people would send her, like the one on the right. Fields attempts to carry on her great tradition of reporting and was eager to weigh in on the recent union battle in the state of Michigan. Fox News contributor Steven Crowder was punched in the face by a man at a protest. Michelle knows a thing or two about these kind of altercations. She rose to prominence after being knocked to the ground by a police officer during Occupy protests in NYC.

Crowder has come under a bit of scrutiny in recent days. Gawker brought up the idea that maybe Crowder deserved the beatdown he received. Fields calls the story “atrocious” and says that the author, Max Read, is a “terrible human being.” She takes Read to task because he accuses Crowder of “inserting himself in the situation.”

Maybe Fields should have read her own work before commenting on the story further, because she may not disagree with Read as much as she thinks. Read more

One of the most prolific tweeters that we follow is Major Garrett. The brand new Chief White House Correspondent for CBS/Columnist for National Journal takes his Twitter feed to many different places. We began to worry about Garrett since he hadn’t tweeted since November 22. Just as we were thinking of sending out the search dogs, he re-emerged Tuesday morning with the following tweet.

Same Twitterer, same avatar (that will never change) but a new handle. Welcome to @majorcbs. As always, thanks for following.

— Major Garrett(@MajorCBS) December 4, 2012

He lives! And he’s changed his name! While he will still write a column for National Journal, his main gig will be with CBS. When Garrett covered the White House for Fox News, he tweeted as “@MajoratWH.” When he jumped to National Journal, he switched to “@MajoratNJ.” At the time, followers seemed to wait with baited breath for what the new handle would be. When we got the news about his moving to CBS, we figured it was only a matter of time.

We reached out to Garrett about the name change… Read more