>Appearing on Fox News’ Red Eye this morning, comedian Michael Ian Black made a bold stand for religious freedom in standing up for a Native American tribe’s right to kill bald eagles.

Last summer, Fox News had a pretty big hole to fill in their now Glenn Beck-less 5 o’clock hour. When they decided to put on an opinion panel show inspired in part by The View, no one knew if it would work. Even the hosts had their doubts. However, sure enough, the show became a big ratings winner for the network. And, ever since the premiere, one of the most attention (and headline) grabbing aspects has been the resident “crazy uncle” to the show’s family of hosts, Bob Beckel, who was nice enough to talk to Mediaite about how the show was created and why it works.

It was “spooky.” Its message is that “we are all going to die anyway.” It “lowers the level of discourse.” It “raised the level of discourse.” It was equal parts David Lynch and PETA-bait horror movie. The panel on last night’s Red Eye had a lot of opinions about the latest ad from the Herman Cain PAC “Cain Connections,” in which a small child dumps water on a drowning fish to make the point that the stimulus isn’t helping the economy, while Cain looks on from a faraway cliff. And boy, is it a weird ad.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke was rejected from the House hearing on contraception because Rep. Darrell Issa decided that she wasn’t “qualified” enough (unlike, y’know, the massive batch of all dudes who spoke instead). Well, Fluke is certainly not getting ignored now, particularly in light of the controversial comments Rush Limbaugh made in which he called her a “slut” and a “prostitute.” Those comments have created a absolutely massive political firestorm with everyone from Speaker Boehner to President Obama putting in their two cents. Today, on The Five, Eric Bolling shared his thoughts, suggesting that Fluke may actually be “a plant.”

On Friday morning’s Red Eye, Greg Gutfeld paid tribute to Andrew Breitbart by playing a clip from the very first episode of the show, which first aired February 6, 2007. “What I want to say is about you,” Breitbart told Gutfeld. “You said that you won’t have a lot of viewers. but you represent a lot of viewers like myself who have no discernable expertise on anything and I think that people will relate to you on that!”

Last week, The Huffington Post published a column by author and Simpsons writer Larry Doyle entitled “The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum.” In it, Doyle, a former Catholic, pretends to expose the terrifying truths of Catholic black-robed masses and “cannibalistic reverie.” The satirical piece has caused quite a stir and has now even gotten its own condemnation from The Five who devoted a whole segment to yelling about it. However, in the midst of their outraged reverie (I like that word and I’m gonna use it now), they seemed to completely miss the point.

Just a few short months ago, President Obama was getting hammered for his plan to “cut and run” from Afghanistan. Nowadays though, some burned Korans and an escalating number horrible deaths have sent us right through the looking glass. “Why are you so weak, Obama?” has apparently turned into “What the hell are you waiting for?!” Today on The Five, all of the hosts agreed that it was time to leave the nation far behind.

As epitomized best by the unfortunate ESPN “chink in the armor” incident last week, America’s obsession with Jeremy Lin has brought out some of the lesser informed aspects of the relationship between the mainstream media and Asian Americans, and to help, the Asian American Journalists’ Association release a guideline for how to appropriately refer to Asian newsmakers without being racist. While the Red Eye panel found some of the tips useful, there were others host Greg Gutfeld thought teetered on “giving people bad ideas.”

Today towards the end of The Five, Dana Perino announced that they wouldn’t be doing the planned segment on Jeremy Lin because there was a surprise guest in the studio that even the hosts weren’t aware of. Suddenly, in strides none other than Sarah Palin much to the glee of everyone involved (a positively giddy Eric Bolling made sure to tell the producers that he “loved them”).

After doing some segments this afternoon about how the electric car is the devil and such, The Five took a look at how the Republican nomination race is going. Greg Gutfeld started things off by making an impassioned plea for Mitt Romney to start getting more angry. The conversation then turned to someone who has no problem getting angry; Newt Gingrich. How angry?

There are certain words and phrases that we here at Mediaite keep our ears open for when scanning the airwaves. Whenever an anchor starts a comment or segment by saying something like “This may make people mad but…” or “I don’t mean to sound racist but…”, it usually means that what they have to say is going to make for good, blog-worthy television. We can add to that list another great conversational preface in the phrase “Can I just throw a conspiracy theory out here?” That’s the question Eric Bolling asked on today’s The Five and, hoo boy, did he deliver.

It is the biggest secular holiday of the year, so naturally much of today’s The Five revolved around last night’s Super Bowl events. The crew particularly stopped on the first case of indecent conduct during the Halftime Show since Janet Jackson exposed her breast to America: British/Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. giving the finger to the camera, as she does in the music video for the song being performed, “Give Me All Your Lovin’.” Most found it vulgar on its face, but Dana Perino objected not to the gesture but to M.I.A.’s presence at all: why would Madonna perform with a rapper who was “not even an American?”

Does one have the constitutional right to watch porn in public? The ACLU has signed up to defend the rights of citizens from a public library that has banned pornographic URLs from their computers and, naturally, this ended up one of the main topics of discussion on Red Eye. Some on the panel– notably Gavin McInnes– considered it a serious First Amendment issues. Ann Coulter disagreed, drawing a contrast to Citizens United: supporting political causes is speech, “getting off isn’t speech.

Does President Obama have an “enemies list”? That’s the provocative allegation put forth by Ted Olson in the Wall Street Journal. Olson is a former member of the Bush Administration as well as representative of the Koch Brothers who just so happen to be the only real people Olson thinks is on this supposed list. So, does the list exist?

On Fox News’ The Five, co-host Bob Beckel has a usual batch of ways in which he shows how angry he is about a subject. There’s “Muffled Curse Words” Beckel, where he lets the audience know what he really thinks by saying the beginnings (and just that) of all sorts of fun words. And there’s “Silent, Arms Folded” Beckel, my personal favorite, who gets so upset about a subject he refuses to even talk about it.

The nice thing about shows like The Five is that, even when all of the hosts agree on something, you at least get different opinions on why they agree. Take for example, Nancy Pelosi’s threats that she “knows something” that will keep Newt Gingrich from ever being president. The five hosts all agree it won’t hurt Gingrich, but they gave different reasons why.

Recently, Newt Gingrich has had a massive upswing from his new debate strategy; forget the candidates, go after the moderator. Twice now, he’s taken huge swings at the closest representative of the media at the nearest sign of a question that seems untoward. And, twice, he’s been able to reap the benefits of those attacks by milking the audience’s applause.

Race as an issue is increasingly rearing its head in this year’s Republican primaries, with many now accusing Newt Gingrich of race-baiting by calling President Obama the “food stamp president” and calling for underprivileged children to get jobs as janitors. On tonight’s The Five, the panel discussed the race issue and came to a near unanimous conclusion that Gingrich wasn’t racist. Even Bob Beckel agreed on that one, but explained that his language did sound inflamed with subtle racial cues on occasion.

Fox News’ medical correspondent Dr. Keith Ablow was last seen condemning respect for transgendered people, and this week came out with a piece that was vintage Ablow: Newt Gingrich, he argued, would make a great present precisely because he had been a philandering weasel. Needless to say, this logic did not go over so well on Red Eye, where the panel intermittently called it “asinine” and tried to determine if it was just masterful trolling on the doctor’s part.

There’s been quite a bit of hubbub lately about The Obamas, a controversial book by The New York Times‘ Jodi Kantor, which promises all sorts of juicy details from the White House. Well, one of those details leaked recently and it’s been blowing up. You see, it appears that the Obama Administration had a star-studded Halloween party for military families and kept it a secret from the White House press! Well, earlier today, our own Tommy Christopher (an actual member of said press) pointed out the many reasons why the “scandal” was fairly silly. However, later on, during The Five, Eric Bolling argued that…

Oh my God. Eric Bolling and Tommy Christopher agree about something. We have reached the End Times.

There is one strongly held belief of Fox News’ Bob Beckel that I agree with and support wholeheartedly and it has nothing to do with his politics. It’s his belief that absolutely nothing to do with Kim Kardashian should ever be discussed on a channel with “News” in the title. Today on The Five, the group tried to do a segment on how some blah blah group tried to blah blah Kim Kardashian about blah blah blah blah whatever and Beckel had the integrity to give that crap the same amount of respect I am now.

Today on The Five, the gang discussed Sarah Palin’s talk of possible third party candidates and focused on Ron Paul. After Eric Bolling joked that Paul’s fans may be “too stoned” to make it to the polls, the topic of conversation turned to a recent ad for Paul which featured a number of liberal commentators. The hosts questioned whether it would be effective or simply a turn off.

In the world of the microscopic news cycle, a year is a mighty long time. Think “dog years” on steroids. Over the course of the past year, in thousands (around 7,500 ) of articles and millions (between 3 and 4 million) of words, Mediaite has covered the ups and downs of that whizzing, ricocheting media world. In case you lost track in that sea of information, we’ve compiled a list of 2011 Media Winners and Losers that we hope will be the start  of a conversation, not the end of one. Here, in no particular order, are Mediaite’s 2011 Media Winners and Losers.

As Kimberly Guilfoyle put it in the opening of today’s Five, “the knives are out for Ron Paul.” With his Iowa poll numbers surging, the other GOP candidates have gone on the offensive, providing a number of colorful, anti-Paul quotes. The Five hosts had some cutting utensils of their own, discussing how Paul’s less mainstream ideas were “sinking” his chances of becoming President or even getting the nomination.

The Five is clearly Fox News’ golden child (they even got a damn New York Times profile!) and so, as the old veterans are out vacationing it up, the network is giving their favorite new superstars run of the place. Greg Gutfeld guested for Bill O’Reilly last night, Eric Bolling’s doing it tonight, Kimberly Guilfoyle is stepping in for Greta Van Susteren, and Andrea Tantaros sometimes does double duty on the radio. As they were all discussing their good fortune at the close of the show today, one lingering question remained; won’t somebody think of Bob Beckel?