Bill O'Reilly explained it to the Milwaukee Journal the other day, during his "I'm a bigger deal than Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh" media tour. Here's the sort of warm fuzzy that circulates around the office each morning:

“I get a clip file every single day. The clip file has in it all attacks on Fox News personnel from all the media around the country... Every day. News reporters are attacked, executives are attacked, show hosts are attacked, every day."

You know, that would kind of explains a lot. Reading a daily enemies list would help Fox News flack Irena Briganti become known more for her blacklist and revenge plots than as a high-energy, friends-with-everyone promoter for her network.

It would explain why even Shep Smith, the in-house contrarian who eschews the predictability of partisanship, has adopted as his slogan "They hate us and want us to fail."

And why O'Reilly's chronic temper tantrums have only gotten worse since he came to Fox.

Daily habits are powerful. Go for a swim each morning, you'll feel energized. Drink a cup of coffee, you'll feel wired. Read the worst things anyone has said about you, anywhere, and you'll be ready to rip someone's head off.

That last one is probably the winning habit, not so much for your heart as for your ratings.

[via Inside Cable News]

I'm gonna go ahead and say friend, if only because his going rogue at Fox and deciding to mostly just report the news objectively (albeit while yelling) is a noble (if pointless) effort to steer the cable news net back toward the gummy middle. Plus he's fiery and angry enough while defending his supposed non-bias that he's still got a streak of the occasionally-fun Fox crazy running through him:

"But we are under intense scrutiny because of our opinion shows. Are there people who want the news done a certain way? You bet there are, and some are in this building. But they don't affect what I do. The inner pressure and outer pressure that everyone thinks exists doesn't. When I hear people say that Fox News is right wing, I know that's not true, because I'm the one doing the news. It's my show, and there's no place for opinion on my show. It's uninteresting to me. I don't care what Sean Hannity thinks and I don't care what Alan Colmes thinks and I guarantee they don't care what I think and they don't know, either. You know what's interesting to me? What's interesting to me is that the thing people want to know about is the part on which I spend absolutely no time."

Because They Hate Shepard Smith and They Want Him to Fail [Esquire]

Smith's line is that he's just a news reporter standing up for objective truth, and that this doesn't put him at odds with orthodox conservative pundits like Hannity. "I know what I do, I do the news," Smith told O'Reilly.

That's often true! But he's also sometimes a bit of a pundit, albeit in a fun, appropriate and satisfying way. The newsman wasn't above letting some contempt show through, for example, when he scolded Nader for using the term "Uncle Tom" in reference to Obama. A disgruntled musing on Joe the Plumber was opinionated enough to close out an editorial at the Times (Fox's conservative peanut gallery must have loved that).

And as Smith bares his teeth like that more often, and as the right-wing punditocracy continues to implode, as reports surface that his right-wing boss Roger Ailes is on Rupert Murdoch's bad side, viewers are naturally going to wonder if Shep Smith is an harbinger of bigger things to come at Fox News. Or at least of more entertaining things.

(Video up top.)

Ask the press to call a gay news host like they see one, and all of a sudden demureness is a virtue. For every stab taken at outing a closeted news man, a contradictory report pops up. ABC's Sam Champion made out with a chick! Bill Hemmer was seen loving a lady on the Empire State building! But let's be careful not to point out why both those things are newsworthy enough to be mentioned.

Gay? Not so much? Maybe? You tell us. Our bastardization of the Kinsey scale below uses a scale of 0-6. The higher the score, the gayer the news gay.

Hemmer's star rose at CNN, where his boyish looks endeared him to legions of grandmothers and gays. We hear the lady he showed off yesterday has been his girlfriend for several years. Whatever, we giggle when he says "lover" in this video.
Bill Hemmer—1.5

We and everyone we know have seen Anderson Cooper out and about at gay bars for years, so the charade seems a little beyond the point.
Anderson Cooper—6

ABC weatherman Sam Champion was spotted the other day sucking face with a woman, which might unnerve his ex-boyfriend Jose or his current flame Sean, if you believe our commenters.
Sam Champion—5

Fox News anchorman Shepherd Smith has lovely locks, a Southern twang and piles of rampant homosexuality rumors. Of course, he doesn't help matters much by saying "blowjob" by accident during his live newscast, like he does here. A Washington Blade columnist basically outed Smith two years ago when he wrote about running into the anchor at a New York piano bar. He declined Smith's invitation to go back to his place.
Shepherd Smith—5

Fox shoutman Sean Hannity's college radio show was canceled when the station accused him of discriminating against gays. Besides his pundit duties, Hannity puts his name behind a match-making feature on his website called, we kid you not, Hannidate, which is the creepiest thing ever. The site's options allow same sex couple searches. "Hannidate is open to everyone," he told a newspaper in 2006, including, the site says, those looking for life partners.
Sean Hannity—3

• Formerly endearingly real British singer Lily Allen lost a lot of weight via hypnotism. Lame! [TMZ]
  
• Image maintenance alert! Glamour editor Cindy Leive totally flipped her wig, we are told to believe, when she found out that the recently-canned young staffer Ashley Baker had told a group of lawyers that "dreadlocks or Afros are a definite 'no'" in the office. [Page Six]
  
• Vanity Fair blowhard Christopher Hitchens has had the hair removed from his nutsack. [Page Six]
  
• Fox anchor Shep Smith (or, perhaps, another gentleman similarly employed!) can't keep his cats off the bed during gay, gay sex. [Gatecrasher, last item]