Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly lashed out against the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8. “California voters, basically just two judges said, ‘you know what?’ We don’t really care about you!” O’Reilly exclaimed. “What do you want really doesn’t matter because we say this is unconstitutional to deny gays the right to marry.”

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.

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.

During today’s The Five, the panel went around the table assessing last night’s Iowa results and the subsequent analysis, particularly Sarah Palin‘s comments on the end of the race, praising Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney but warning the Republican Party that “the worst thing that the GOP machine can do is marginal Ron Paul and his supporters.” Most of the panel agreed, except for Eric Bolling, who argued that his supporters were mostly one-issue voters.

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.

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?

With the Iowa caucuses a week away, The Five revisited the 2012 Republican presidential landscape to find what the polls were looking like in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. And it appears that, despite a rough week of racist newsletter coverage, Rep. Ron Paul is still on top. What did the panel compare this development to? Greg Gutfeld noted that, to some that had worked with the Congressman, it was as if “Crazy Uncle got too far.”

The headline quote is not actually part of the text of Brian Stelter‘s eye-opening report on Fox News’ surprise hit The Five, but a description of the atmosphere from the inimitable Bob Beckel. He, along with producers and other co-hosts, spoke to Stelter in this week’s New York Times report that exposes several surprises about the show– the hosts were told they were trying out for a weekend hosting gig, for one– and tries to get to the bottom of its success.

This past weekend, Saturday Night Live wrapped up their show with a sketch showing Jesus Christ appearing in the Denver Broncos locker room to tell Tim Tebow that he loves him but maybe the guy could “turn it down a notch.” Pat Robertson has already rushed to call the sketch “anti-Christian bigotry” so, when The Five opened today’s show teasing a segment on the situation, we knew someone was going to be outraged. Would it be Catholic Kimberly Guilfoyle? The (huge) Tebow fan Eric Bolling? Nope. The offended one was actually lone-liberal Bob Beckel who called the sketch “despicable.”

On Monday’s The Five, Greg Gutfeld responded to a Democratic National Committee ad calling Newt Gingrich the “original Tea Partier.” “The original tea partier, as you know is [Rep.] Ron Paul,” Gutfeld observed, “not Newt Gingrich. ” “Can you stop right there?!” Eric Bolling exclaimed.

While The Five has made a name for itself as a source of intelligent but entertaining political discussion that doesn’t take it self all that seriously, the real reason it has become such a widespread success, it can be posited, is that it is has its own narrative outside of the news cycle, with complex character arcs that develop with every new adventure. Take this segment from yesterday evening, when the “straightest woman in America” Dana Perino reported live from a ranch in Las Vegas, and got some great recommendations for “massage parlors” to visit from wacky uncle Bob Beckel.

This just in! High profile liberals are jerky jerk stupid poop faces!

That appeared to be the gist of a segment today on The Five. Any frequent viewer of the show could have guessed that any report they did on Alec Baldwin getting removed from an airplane was going to be little more than insults. However, this thing seemed to get away from them and turn pretty childish pretty quickly.

Perhaps owing to the fractious and unsteady state of the GOP primaries, it’s been a particularly introspective week on The Five, with the hosts looking at the race and then looking inside themselves. First, Kimberly Guilfoyle revealed that, despite what’s been said on the show, she actually thinks President Obama will win in 2012. Then, Eric Bolling, finally seeming to realize that Rick Perry might not take the candidacy, started switching up gears. Now, as the week ends, Greg Gutfeld wondered aloud if part of the blame in the GOP’s indecisiveness might lie at the feet of cable news itself.

If you’re a regular viewer of The Five, you know that Barack Obama’s chances in 2012 are not good. Despite Bob Beckel’s protestations, every day it feels like we get more proof that he is doomed, doomed, doomed. Solyndra goes all the way to the top! No one can win with these unemployment numbers! Even liberals hate him! That’s why it felt so surprising to hear Kimberly Guilfoyle, with litte fanfare and at such an early date, posit that the President already has re-election in the bag.

When Glenn Beck ended his run on FOX News, the channel had a plethora of options with which to replace him. And they landed on what was probably the most unlikely of formats — a five-person panel show that tackles the day’s topics from several angles. It’s like The View, but for political junkies. And with more suspenders.

In Florida this week, an appeals court decided to deny a petition that would have stopped Judge Richard Nielsen from using Sharia Law to help decide a dispute between former and current trustees at a local mosque. On, The Five this afternoon, this resulted in an interesting debate over whether or not any religious law or teachings should ever be used in a court case and, if so, should one religion be held above each other.

Fans of The Five can throw their hands in the air (perhaps even waving them like they just don’t care) and rejoice to the news that Fox News has announced that the 5pm panel show has become a permanent fixture on the cable news dial, thus increasing the chances that we will one day see the Bob Beckel/Eric Bolling fist fight we’re all so eagerly awaiting.

A large circle of vaguely left-wing, anti-capitalist protesters may not sound like the friendliest atmosphere to send Fox News film crews into, and yet Friday night was full of coverage from representatives of both The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity, which were treated slightly more warmly than the first crew to get down there led by Red Eye‘s Bill Schulz. Schulz accompanied Sean Hannity last night to make sense of the footage, which Jesse Watters gave his eyewitness testimony to Bill O’Reilly.

While others on his channel were giving the current administration credit for their recent spate of terrorist killin’, Eric Bolling wasn’t about to join into the Obama back-patting. Instead, he took a page from that last big terrorist death, and accused Obama of overshadowing the guy who really deserves credit; President Bush. Bolling claimed to be offended by the current President’s undeserved “victory lap,” while an incredulous Kimberly Guilfoyle pointed out that she didn’t remember seeing Obama do any running.

Hey, gang! It looks like it’s time for another round of our favorite weekday television game, “Did Someone Just Curse on The Five?” After the last round with Eric Bolling (which led to a big debate here at Mediaite headquarters), we’re back with the game’s frequent star, Bob Beckel. During a discussion of Janeane Garofalo’s comments on Countdown, Greg Gutfeld made a claim that “the Republican Party tries to raise the boats for everyone, including blacks.” Beckel clearly disagreed and let it be known with a loud expletive.

The Wall Street “Day of Rage” protests taking a strong stand against [something the protesters will decide later, whatever man, you're not the boss of me] are well into their first week, and it only took five days for them to attract Red Eye‘s Bill Schulz, who arrived with his own set of demands for Wall Street (“Bring Back Growing Pains!”) and coexisted peacefully with the protesters, until he was recognized.

Is it appropriate to make a cheap joke in a televised discussion on a consumer health and safety issues? Attorney Mark Eiglarsh seemed to think so when he went on America Live to discuss Dr. Oz‘s recent controversial findings that showed various apple juices contained higher levels of arsenic than the safe drinking water limit as determined by the EPA.

The Five‘s Dana Perino promised today that they were going to “fix” the problem most often cited by Ron Paul and his supporters; that he was being ignored by the media. However, while the show did dedicate an entire segment to the Congressman, it’s probably not the kind of media coverage he or his fans intended as the tenure of the piece was resoundingly negative from all each of the titular five hosts.

One of the most interesting things about watching Fox News’ The Five is that each hosts seems to have some input in what stories they cover but not which ones the rest do. There are frequent jokes about whose segment got the most time and they sometimes make it abundantly clear when a story isn’t their cup of tea (witness Greg Gutfeld laying his head on the table or Bob Beckel playing cell phone games). Beckel clearly was not all too interested in discussing last month’s disappearance of Robyn Gardner in Aruba. He spent the whole segment making jokes about the suspect’s appearance and the dangers of online dating and then, at the end, he wondered allowed if they’d even be talking about this if Gardner were black.

Was there another f-word on The Five today? If so, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising. When you’ve got a live show where the debates sometimes get contentious, this stuff happens. No, we’re just amused it wasn’t Bob Beckel this time. In fact, just a couple minutes after Beckel made a joke about not being able to say a word he wanted, it was Eric Bolling who let one slip