Of all the celebrities who stopped on the Oscars red carpet to speak with the man holding the Fox News-flagged microphone, reporter Jesse Watters says George Clooney was the nicest. “He was the biggest celebrity that spoke to me; he didn’t have to stop and talk to me, but he did,” Watters told Bill O’Reilly last night. “And he was good-natured about the whole conversation.”

Excepting Watters’ last question. When the reporter asked Clooney as the actor was walking away, “Is Obama doing a good job?”, The Descendants star reminded, “Yes he is. He’s the President of the United States, not Obama. He’s the President of the United States.” Clooney then glared purposefully at Watters.

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Going up weekday nights against Anderson Cooper and Bill O′Reilly at 8 p.m. may sound like cable news suicide. But per an LA Times profile piece by Alana Semuels, MSNBC host Ed Schultz is making it work:

This year through early February, Schultz’s nightly The ED Show viewership has averaged 608,000, a 60% increase from his ratings during the same period in 2010, according to Nielsen. He’s surpassed Cooper, though he has more than a million fewer viewers than O’Reilly.

In response to critics who accuse Schultz of deceitfully switching from a Conservative to Liberal POV, he tells Semuels it’s genuine. He says a large spark for the transformation came from a most unusual first date with his now-wife and afternoon radio show producer, Wendy. She took him to a homeless shelter.

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Last night while discussing the UC Davis protests, FOX news anchor Megyn Kelly told Bill O’Reilly that pepper spray is “a food product, essentially.” And by the early morning she’d become a trending topic on Twitter and a fun new meme. Gawker commenters are having a field day. A few of our favorites:

More fun “Megyn Essentials” are sure to come throughout the day. The Internet is just getting warmed up.

Rob Savillo at Media Matters for America has a great rundown today of how the media handled the October 28 debunking of previous claims that the Department of Justice had footed a$16-per-muffin bill for a 2009 conference.

The good news, for SoCal media watchers, is that the LA Times ran not just a Sunday October 30 item about the retraction of the DOJ Inspector General allegation, but also had another in-between item about host hotel chain Hilton disputing the bakery brouhaha. The bad news is that the major cable TV purveyors of this TSA-grope-level sensationalism have yet to retract:

Fox News and Fox Business pushed the $16-muffin story the most out of any cable channel (Bill O’Reilly, in particular, on Fox News’  The O’Reilly Factor), but no Fox program available in the Nexis database has broadcast a follow-up segment reporting the IG’s retraction.

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A few days ago, a U.S. soldier stationed in Afghanistan posted these photos to his Tumblr account, along with an explanation:

Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington – Patriot; George Soros – Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap. Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander’s orders.

The post quickly went viral, and the soldier, who does not blog under his real name, felt the need to respond to some of the reactions. He clarified that while he understood the issues surrounding the burning of books, these were torched for practical reasons. At his remote location there is no way to return the books, and extra space is at a minimum. All unwanted items are disposed of, mostly by burning.

He added, “I won’t say I didn’t take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp’s writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity.”

If you’d like to send the troops things they actually need, you can do so via Operation Shoebox.

When UCLA law professor Adam Winkler first began to promote his new book, Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America, he spoke to a booking agent about appearing on television news programs.

“So which side are you on,” the agent asked, “far-right or far-left?” Winkler explained that neither he nor his book came down hard on either side of the gun debate, to which the agent replied incredulously, “Have you ever seen a TV news show?” Nuance, it seems, doesn’t get booked on FOX or MSNBC. So without an extremist stance, Winkler’s career as a talking head was over before it began.

This anecdote was shared with guests by the author at his book party in Beverly Hills Thursday night, held at the home of his parents, Irwin and Margo Winkler, and co-hosted by Arianna Huffington and Ron and Kelly Meyer. But the history of guns in America, Winkler explained, doesn’t correspond neatly with extreme ideologies.

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Given the exit of his good friend Tony Pierce from the LA Times in the wave of layoffs that hit the paper this summer, Andrew Malcom‘s exit from the paper seemed inevitable. Looks like that day has finally come. The Top of the Ticket blogger is moving on from the Times next month, when he’ll start a new job as a blogger for Investor’s Business Daily’s website Investors.com.

Top of the Ticket has been a big traffic draw to the Times‘ site, but those numbers haven’t come without controversy. The Times maintains that Top of the Ticket is politically neutral, but Malcolm, a former Laura Bush press flack, routinely posted conservative talking points on the site. Along with Andrew Breitbart and Bill O’Reilly, Malcolm was easily one of Media Matters’ favorite right-wing targets. Frankly, we’re astonished that site hasn’t said anything about Malcolm’s exit yet. Guess they’re keeping it classy.

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Interesting item from THR Esq. we missed the other day in the wake of the LA Times layoff news. It seems Fox News is being sued for copyright infringement after Bill O’Reilly used an image of Assata Shakur by photographer  Delphine Fawundu Buford without permission on his show. Buford is pressing suit.

From THR Esq:

Buford’s complaint, which seeks both actual and statutory damages in New York federal court, alleges that Fox News ignored “normal licensing protocols and plaintiff’s copyright for the sole purpose of ‘beating’ its competition” and that the “speed in getting imagery into the market place supplanted all other considerations and became paramount.”

Love it. The photo, incidentally, was used a few months ago when O’Reilly was worked up in a lather about rapper Common’s visit to the White House. Glad to see that non-story come back to bite him in the ass.

Come on. You know you want it. Even though everyone and their mother knew the fake conservative outrage over President Obama inviting Common to the White House was so ridiculous the story wouldn’t make it past the weekend. But you still want it. Jon Stewart abusing Bill O’Reilly over the Common-invite on his own show.

These two go at it from time to time with mixed results. But this one wasn’t even fair. Stewart gave O’Reilly a minute or two to get a lather up, and then it was over. Well, it wasn’t over. It was like the third round of the Manny Pacquiao/Shane Mosley fight. Mosley tried to go toe-to-toe with Pacquiao, got knocked on his ass, and spent the rest of the fight running.

Part Two of the “debate” after the jump.
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Courtesy of a kindly tipster, we get this glimpse of the way Huffington Post runs its free content ship. What you see here a HuffPo moderator page, with directives from senior staff posted in red.

Anything stand out? Let’s zoom in.

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