You can say this about Nancy Grace: she seems to be really enjoying her time on Dancing With The Stars. And she’s using her official YouTube channel to show what ABC’s cameras aren’t capturing — progress reports on that week’s dances and impromptu moments with her makeup team. This week, DWTS had an 80′s theme, and Grace, going down Memory Lane, revealed that she was a high school cheerleader back in Georgia. She even whipped out a cheer to prove it. After surviving the cut and back at work, someone pressed Grace for an encore. And she obliged. right there in the CNN lobby:

A day after having a Republican debate thrown into the mix, normalcy returned, somewhat, to the cable news ratings, with CNN falling back on its pre-debate numbers and FOX regaining a stranglehold on the top spot. There was, however, some notable movement buried in the ratings.

Nancy Grace and her partner, Tristan MacManus, advanced to the next round of Dancing With The Stars on Tuesday, sealing their spot in the Final Eight and avoiding elimination. After the voting was announced, Nancy and Tristan took to Nancy’s personal YouTube account to thank fans for their support

Remember Court TV and the national obsession with high profile trials? For about a decade from O.J. Simpson to Scott Peterson and Natalee Holloway the country seemed to have an insatiable appetite for soap opera like details that slowly and painstakingly emerged day in and day out in courtrooms and from investigations around the country. Courthouses regularly became tent cities with media encampments at high profile trials. Some judges and lawyers (and witnesses ie. Kato Kaelin) became more recognizable than most movie stars. Sometimes, the cases addressed important issues like in the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy Mcveigh or assisted suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian or most obviously, Bush v. Gore. Others were far more frivolous like Anna Nicole Smith‘s lawsuit or a random celebrity drunk driving or drug case. Multiple daily cable news shows hosted by the likes of Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Nancy Grace (and me) covered the minutiae with analysis and debate from lawyers and participants.

On her HLN show, host Joy Behar commented on colleague and Dancing With The Stars contestant Nancy Grace‘s recent “nipplegate.” To some, it appeared that Grace’s areola unleashed itself on an unsuspecting public while she danced, although Grace insists she was wearing pasties at the time. “To me, it looked like a Frisbee,” confided Behar.

On Monday night, the world was shocked, shocked when, after all the hand-wringing over Chaz Bono’s fiendish insistence on existing, it actually seemed that HLN’s Nancy Grace was the one to plunge our nation’s children into depravity. The worst depravity of all in fact, the depravity of a briefly viewed human female breast! However, Grace has spoken out, denying that that slightly different shade of pink that we saw for a second was actually her nipple.

Thank God. I guess my children won’t be going to Hell after all.

On last night’s Dancing with the Stars, legal analyst Nancy Grace shocked America with half a second of breast exposure. Given the precarious moral nature of this season of DWTS to some conservatives given the presence of Chaz Bono there, Jon Stewart posited tonight that the biggest story of the day would get major coverage on Fox News, where the transgendered contestant was called dangerous to children by resident Dr. Keith Ablow.

Since its premiere last week, opponents of this season’s Dancing with the Stars have claimed that the images broadcast therein could corrupt and severely traumatize children. All the griping around Chaz Bono seemed to leave the Dancing with the Stars unprepared for the real threat: Nancy Grace‘s breasts, escaping the shackles of her dress after a fairly energetic performance.

Tonight’s premiere of Dancing with the Stars brought with it several surprising names, perhaps none moreso (in a confusing way) than HLN legal maven Nancy Grace. Grace kicked off her run on the program with a cha-cha that began with Grace sliding out of a desk in a glittery white gown and making plenty of conservative, albeit difficult to follow, steps around her partner.

Mediaite founder and ABC News legal analysts Dan Abrams and HLN’s Nancy Grace went head-to-head this morning on Good Morning America, debating the Bob Ward murder trial taking place in Orlando. In a 911 call, Ward admitted to shooting his wife, but later backtracked, saying she killed herself while he tried to take the gun [...]

This is obviously not your typical media post. While I personally don’t care for TV shows about dancing, the idea of cable news hosts, known best for their political coverage, participating on such a show is an interesting spectacle to behold. It falls in that pantheon of “wait, what?” TV moments like Larry King rolling with Snoop Dogg or Glenn Beck engaging in some awkward sexual banter with Rick Santorum. It is a class of television all its own.

TMZ reports the legal team defending Michael Jackson‘s doctor, Conrad Murray, have asked a judge to sequester the jury in the doctor’s manslaughter trial, arguing sequestration is the only way to protect Murray from “character assassination” at the hands of cable news analysts expected to cover the trial–in particular, they HLN’s Nancy Grace. “According to [...]

With World Wrestling Entertainment’s SummerSlam this Sunday night on Pay-Per-View, it seemed like an appropriate time to realize that the primetime cable news universe can often resemble the world of professional wrestling. With various hosts often feuding with one another, and frequently giving passionate “promos” regarding why their network or their show is the best, it’s time now to recognize who each host actually is inspired by in the WWE and then to pit the oversized personalities of cable news up against one another in a no-holds barred showdown!

In case anyone were wondering, Nancy Grace is still angry. The fact that Casey Anthony is now a free woman seems to have lit an even brighter fire under Grace as she visited Piers Morgan tonight for an interview. Repeating that she was “let down” by the verdict, Grace took offence to Morgan suggesting she made the case “her own” and shot back at other lawyers who had spoken to Morgan and considered the verdict reasonable: “your experts are wrong.”

ABC legal analyst and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams teamed back up with HLN’s Nancy Grace to discuss Casey Anthony‘s release from prison.

Abrams, for one, thinks speculation that Anthony will be able to profit off her notoriety with a reality show and book deals and the like is discounting “how much anger there is against Casey Anthony.” If she’s going to make money off her case, he guesses, it won’t be with a major organization or company but, rather, with one on the fringe.

A rather subdued, almost melancholic Grace then offered her reaction to Anthony’s new freedom.

The image of a liberated Casey Anthony leaving the prison that has for years housed her must have been extremely jarring for those that followed the case closely and had no doubt of her guilt. Needless to say, it was difficult to watch for Nancy Grace. Grace appeared on Good Morning America today to react to the midnight release, and aside from questions as to who is funding Anthony’s getaway, she noted weighing heavily on her was a “disappointment in our justice system.”

Bill Maher braved an hour with Piers Morgan tonight, fielding tough political questions that as host he can usually manage to avoid– questions like “who have you voted for?” and “is America less racist today?” He fielded them happily, though one appeared to give him a headache to think about: “if someone put a gun to your head, would you vote for Rep. Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin?”

As much as it has done to elevate her national profile, the Casey Anthony trial has made a one-dimensional villain of Nancy Grace to many in the media, and while she has kept relatively quiet through the relentless scorn, Grace visited Bill O’Reilly tonight to respond to much of the criticism. Extremely defensive and borderline rude to a relatively sympathetic host, Grace explained (with dramatic scare quotes) whether she went “overboard,” how she came up with “tot mom,” and why she thinks people attack her so much.

I am rarely accurate with prognostications or predictions but I am feeling pretty confident about two things: 1) there will be another high-profile trial in the not too distant future, like Casey Anthony‘s, that will capture the attention of the nation and the media; and 2) it will be followed by the hand-wringing and utter despair about the future of media that trail every high profile case. In fact, there is no surer way to be the belle of your media critic’s ball than to blast the Casey Anthony media coverage. From hackneyed assertions that “it’s not journalism,” to characterizations of it as “merchandising in tragedy”, to the populist position that it’s “just entertainment,” the Anthony coverage, like so many trials before it, serves as the ultimate media scapegoat.

Nancy Grace‘s impassioned coverage of the Casey Anthony trial became so enmeshed with the case itself that, following the jury’s verdict of “not guilty” on several counts, her reaction immediately became one of the most searched-for terms on the internet. Her in-depth coverage — much of it tinged with Grace’s personal feelings about the case and those involved — resulted in a ratings boom for her network, HLN. With that attention and influence comes an inevitable wave of scrutiny and criticism from viewers and colleagues alike. But Grace is now firing back at her critics.

The trial may be over but it looks like Casey Anthony fans won’t have to wait long to see their favorite stars back in action! Variety is now reporting that the media, using other big entertainments like the Pirates of the Caribbean and Matrix movies as a template, is now preparing to cover two more Anthony trials back-to-back. The new trials are set to be released, covered, analyzed, debated, have the analyzation analyzed, re-covered, and live streamed early next year. 2012 can’t come soon enough!

Hoo boy. Today on Fox and Friends, the gang discussed how Casey Anthony‘s attorney Cheney Mason “blasted” the media for its criticism of Anthony, bringing on Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. to weigh in.

“Peter, media assassination, incompetent people on TV… Is he talking about Nancy Grace?” asked host Steve Doocy, casually wearing a hat made of T-bone steaks whilst pacing before a panther.

Yesterday’s stunning verdict in the Casey Anthony trial has revealed a number of rifts in public opinion. While the overriding public opinion seems to be of stunned outrage, there are a few iconoclasts who feel that justice was served by the jury’s decision of not guilty on the charges of murder. But another, more secondary topic that has been just as hotly debated in the wake of the verdict has been the media’s role in this case. And Casey Anthony Defense Attorney Cheney Mason left little doubt on his true feelings evidenced by his gesture here.

“She’s going to have to live with herself for the rest of her life.” Nancy Grace has, perhaps, taken to the plight of little Caylee Anthony with a fervor unparalleled in the national media, and while she made statements earlier in the day, she seems to have saved her best for her own show. Her outrage was in full force tonight, as was that of the attorneys on her program, who decried the injustice made in setting Casey Anthony free (after a term for lying to authorities).

As a nation sat agape at Casey Anthony being found not guilty of killing her young daughter Caylee, many in the media who had no public doubt of her guilt railed against the jury. But as Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher explained to host BC Thomas on WBGN’s The Sports Guys, the legal burden of proof for murder is far higher than the standards required of responsible journalism.