On Tuesday night’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, First Lady Michelle Obama snuck in a stealth shot at former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney‘s singing skills. Asked by Leno what she thought of Gov. Romney’s recent rendition of America The Beautiful, the First Lady replied, with a laugh, “It’s a beautiful song,” adding that “it is America’s song, and it’s a song that’s mean to be sung by every American.”

Last summer, when Newt Gingrich made several significant campaign missteps, the media wrote his candidacy off before it even began. In December, thanks to his strong debate performances, he surged to the top of the field, and some analysts thought he would be the likely nominee. A few weeks later, his campaign fizzled and the media went back to writing him off again. So now that Gingrich is back in the spotlight, the media is naturally… writing him off again.

On his radio program Wednesday, Rush Limabugh slammed Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry over his criticism of Mitt Romney‘s work at Bain Capital, which the Texas Governor deemed “vulture capitalism.” “I’m sorry, folks, that is indefensible!” Limbaugh exclaimed.

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.

While two years of Republican health care “Lies of the Year” had mostly alienated Politifact from conservative good favor, now those who were happy to cheer on the acknowledgement of “Death Panels” as ridiculous and the “pants on fire” status of people like Glenn Beck and Speaker John Boehner are outraged at what some are calling reputation-ending factual errors in the site’s newly-unveiled award. Yes, Politifact has turned on the Democrats and it has produced a somewhat ugly response. But blasting Politifact for lying about Democratic honesty misses a crucial point: even if the Democrats were lying about Medicare, there were many more interesting and significant lies told in 2010.

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.

The last time Michael Moore visited Piers Morgan to discuss the Occupy movement, Moore got into a tense conversation with the host about whether he was or was not a member of the 1% wealthiest in the country. Moore agreed to return to the show and talk income inequality and, naturally, the topic surfaced once again. This time, Moore agreed that some of the time, “I would be in the 1%.”

News of Donald Trump‘s selection as moderator of a coming Newsmax sponsored GOP Debate makes a complete mockery of an institutional process that is already short on credibility and gravitas. Any serious GOP candidate should follow Jon Hunstman‘s lead, do the right thing, and politely decline participation. Who will be next in line to show leadership and bow out of this sham of a debate?

A few weeks ago, I reported that Michael Moore had gone completely off the deep end in his escalating campaign of anti-Obama wingnuttery, making the fact-free claim that President Obama (whom he endearingly calls “O”) had “greenlit” a nationwide crackdown on Occupy Wall Street encampments. Despite widespread ridicule of this delusion, Moore renewed the accusation early this morning, this time in response to evictions at the Philadelphia and Los Angeles camps.

Given yesterday’s festivities, it was pretty easy to miss out on some of the more memorable Thanksgiving moments on cable news– most of us were trying to keep our houses in order, after all. But should you have been awake at 6 AM and watching Fox News, you’d have found the party started way early, with Breitbart.tv’s Larry O’Connor counting down the “Top Five Turkeys Of 2011,” complete with a delicious-looking turkey leg and even more appealing bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon (to drown the pain caused by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

With the Occupy movement having left Wall Street definitively this weekend after footage surfaced of students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed en masse, its most vocal unofficial spokespeople have taken to the airwaves to praise the students for their efforts. Not to be left behind is Michael Moore, who spoke to Lawrence O’Donnell today and one of the students attacked, Kase Wheatley, telling the latter that the image of him and his colleagues being pepper sprayed would be received by the world the same way the images of Tiananmen Square were.

This week began with a series of raids on Occupy movement encampments across the country, and an admission by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan that 18 municipalities had participated in conference calls on how to deal with the camps. Filmmaker Michael Moore, a vocal and visible supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, responded by accusing President Obama, via Twitter, of giving the “green light” for the raids. It’s just the latest in a series of unhinged attacks on the President, by Moore. What gives?

Former lobbyist/corporate corruption poster boy who takes his sartorial cues from Spy vs. Spy Jack Abramoff hit the ground running with a new book straight out of prison, and if his foray to MSNBC is any indication, the left is willing to forgive and forget all that criminal stuff that got him in trouble. Take, for instance, filmmaker/limousine liberal poster boy (who doesn’t really have any funny sartorial choices, sorry) Michael Moore, who lauded Abramoff for “coming clean” and declared there was “no more powerful person” to fight corruption than him.

Just days after being confronted by a conservative blogger over his supposed net worth, filmmaker Michael Moore took similar questions from a local CBS reporter at the Occupy Denver protest, with markedly different results. Rather than ignore CBS-4 reporter Evrod Cassimy, Moore engaged him. When Cassimy brought up Moore’s “rumored” $50 million net worth, though, Moore called him “punk media,” pulled him close, and growled, “You lie!”

Michael Moore — fast-becoming the poster celebrity for the Occupy Wall Street movement — paid a visit to Rachel Maddow‘s program Thursday evening to discuss, among other issues, the recent outbursts of violence coming in, most notably, from the Oakland faction of the protests.

Maddow asked the filmmaker whether there has been some “splitting” within the movement, pointing to the Oakland violence occurring during the wee hours of the morning.

South Park satirized the Occupy Wall Street movement and the political sloganeering of percentiles on Wednesday night’s episode. The premise of South Park‘s parody was that the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition was punishing the school for scoring the lowest percentage in health and fitness in the entire country.

Rabble-rousing documentarian Michael Moore has been front and center in the Occupy Wall Street movement for quite some time, and recently, has fended off some shots for being among the 1% himself. During an appearance at Occupy Portland, a conservative blogger harangued Moore about his net worth, and was ignored, had his shot blocked, and was “shoved in the stomach” for his trouble.

Last Tuesday, communist* filmmaker Michael Moore made a very bizarre declaration on Piers Morgan Tonight: despite being an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, he refused to claim he was part of the “1%,” a number used to dehumanize the top tier of America’s breadwinners. With his disdain for the higher classes so public, he wrote a blog post on his website explaining how he got there and what distinguishes him: unlike many of his peers, he was dedicated to making money off of labor, and not money off of money.

On Anderson Cooper‘s show tonight, documentarian Michael Moore declared that “the wind and the snow is not going to stop the collective anger” of the Occupy Wall Street protestors, and they would continue to speak out against the financial industry into the winter season. If anything, the cold weather will only strengthen their resolve, he claimed.

In his recent interview with the BBC, filmmaker and only moderately wealthy person, you guys, Michael Moore was very clear about his thoughts on how Barack Obama has been faring as president. He also added that Obama and his administration seem to be going on the offensive now in the last leg of his (First?) term. Interviewer Richard Bacon then asked Moore whether he feels Obama had initially approached his presidency with a sense of “naïveté.”

Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who spends much of his time traveling the promote his political ideals. Given his background, Piers Morgan seemed skeptical of Moore’s claims that he, too, was the famed 99% behind the Occupy Wall Street protests. Before a studio audience in a special edition of Piers Morgan Tonight, the host pressed Moore to explain just how he wasn’t a part of the nation’s economic elite, and got little clarification other than Moore’s desire the corporation that pays him “rue the day” they ever gave him money.

With the Occupy Wall Street protests nearly coming to a head this weekend as police attempted, then reneged on a plan to clean up Zuccotti Park, filmmaker and protest supporter Michael Moore visited Lawrence O’Donnell last night to discuss the progress of the protests and their increasingly more coherent demands. Moore, who, by the way, has a book to sell, reminded the audience that the 1% “didn’t get to own most of the nation’s wealth by being stupid,” and that the protesters at this point would only be satisfied to see “a perp walk.”

In a sea of people taking video with hand-held HD cams and accessing the web with their smartphones, the Occupy Wall Street movement has managed a surprisingly old-school, almost primal, atmosphere. Alongside the drumbeats, public urination, and fugitives from justice, the protesters–who, by law, cannot use any microphones, speakers, or bullhorns–have been forced to amplify the words of guest speakers by loudly repeating whatever they say. On Sunday, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek spoke to the masses, and the human microphone was in full effect:

As the Occupy Wall Street protests grow and their demands slowly start to solidify, much of their anti-corporate rhetoric is hitting a sour note with conservatives. On tonight’s Follow the Money, host Eric Bolling and guest Ann Coulter discussed the danger of similar “mob uprisings” and the apparent hypocrisy of some of its celebrity supporters, including Rosanne Barr and Michael Moore.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, who continues his vigil at the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan, dropped in on The Last Word to let host Lawrence O’Donnell know how things are going. We’re not down here to support Senate bill 2567. We’re beyond that. They had their chance a long time ago to try and fix this. They didn’t fix it because they’re in the pocket of these people down here on Wall Street. Moore kicked things off by giving a synopsis of what the protest is not about: So this is not about supporting some piece of legislation or “let’s get behind some politician.”