In the middle of broadcasting the daily news brief, a local Chicago news team was pleasantly interrupted by Ellen DeGeneres, who showed up unexpectedly to take command of the newscast, cheer up the place and hand out all sorts of freebies. Ellen doesn’t seem to realize she interrupted a live newscast, though, until it’s too late. And then she reports the weather!

For a show hosted by one of the most liberal hosts on TV, last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher was pretty racially charged. Discussing the new Arizona immigration law and relating it somehow with an incident on Family Feud where a contestant claimed Ellen Degeneres hated America, Bill Maher concluded that “the problem in this country is older white people.” He didn’t meet much opposition from his panel.

Family Feud and other game shows often provide great fodder for bloopers and other viral video moments.

Well one contestant’s offensive answer about Ellen DeGeneres recently drew the attention of the talk show host – and she replayed the tape “Mystery Science Theater 3000″-style on her show.

When Oprah Winfrey announced she was ending her talk show in 2011, the question immediately arose: who’s the next Oprah? Names such as Glenn Beck, David Letterman, and Conan O’Brien were (mostly jokingly) bandied about, but according to the New York Times, the most serious contender already has a daytime show of her own – Ellen DeGeneres.

When the decade began, the gay community was recovering from its unrequited love affair with the Clinton administration and worried about the culture war being waged by religious conservatives. By the end of the decade, the same people were dealing with their unrequited love affair with the Obama administration and, well, you know where this is going. Still, the decade was not without its highlights – we’ve still come a long, long way since 2000. So, on to the gayest moments of the Aughts!

In the age of the Verified Account, we expect our celebrities and media personalities to be on Twitter. It’s both the quickest and easiest way for them to reach their audiences and it provides a small window into the minutiae of their everyday lives. So we’ve tallied and ranked the top 25 media figures by number of Twitter followers and the results, if not surprising, are telling.

So, collective consciousness of America: Ellen DeGeneres is replacing Paula Abdul on American Idol. Did you reach for the smelling salts when you heard of the ‘shocking’ pick? Are you horrified that an openly gay woman is hosting ‘Merica’s favorite talent show?

Probably not.