God, Newt Gingrich blew it so badly in last night's debate. After lobbying for several days to allow debate audiences to cheer again, and landing Wolf Blitzer, the most destructible sally of a debate moderator in world history, he simply allowed Mitt Romney to take advantage of the crowd and win the debate and couldn't even scream Wolf Blitzer back into his cubby hole of sadness once.

CNN anchor John King's show John King U.S.A. is usually very boring. But not tonight! No, tonight a homeless guy jumped the White House fence right behind where King was shooting. Take that, MSNBC!

Last night, CNN's John King moderated the first Republican primary debate of the 2012 election season. High on theatrics, like King's stupid "This or That" questions for each candidate, the debate had many critics. And as you'll see in the above clip from tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart wasn't all that impressed either.

Tonight in New Hampshire, seven Republican candidates for president in 2012—including Michele Bachmann who just announced her candidacy—shared the stage for the primary season's first debate. The showdown was moderated by CNN's John King, who asked tough questions like "American Idol or Dancing with the Stars?"

In your soggy Monday media column: Salon's sad sale talks fall through, Oprah's network is unpopular, Lorin Stein is the Hot Sexxxy Literary It Boy of the moment, Tina Brown is provincially famous, and John King's future is murky.

CNN's John King apologized on the air yesterday for a guest's use of the term "crosshairs" while describing the Chicago mayor's race. Oh, CNN. You keep playing nanny well after the rest of us have stopped caring.

CNN anchor John King got so frustrated with his "magic" computerized touch-screen wall before the elections that he had a "meltdown" and told crew "I wish I brought a gun to work." To shoot the wall, one hopes.

In your profane Tuesday media column: the FCC's indecency policy is struck down, John King is an unpopular host, Playboy's future is cloudy, and Campbell Brown has a mere two weeks left on CNN—though she has our hearts forever.

• John King will be replacing Lou Dobbs at 7pm on CNN. [WP, NYT]
• CNN execs had been looking to part ways with Dobbs for many months now, although CNN president Jon Klein is denying that all the anti-Dobbs fervor had anything to do with his leaving. Meanwhile, Dobbs' departure is expected to leave up to 30 people without jobs. [TDB, NYT, AP]
• Dobbs' first post-CNN interview will be with Bill O'Reilly. Naturally. [DF]
• Iconix, the apparel company that owns Candie's, Badgley Mischka, and Rocawear, among other brands, is in talks to buy Playboy Enterprises. [BN]
• Bloomberg LP is ducking out of paying severance to BW staffers. [AdAge]
• A dozen staffers were laid off at Newsweek today. [Gawker]
• Martin Scorsese will receive the DeMille award at the Golden Globes. [LAT]
• Katie Couric is assembling media power lists now, apparently. [Forbes]

No, he does not. But CNN will replace the departing Lou Dobbs with mild-mannered touchscreen jockey John King, doubling-down on the admirable straight-news strategy that has catapulted it to the bottom of the cable news race.

Hey, CNN: You've got a long sit-down with Dick Cheney. Would you like to maybe ask him about the newly-revealed assassination squads that reported directly to him, bypassing all military commanders?

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh just spilled the beans on the roving killer team in Minnesota, leaving everyone terrified, as the investigative reporter tends to do, since he's constantly revealing, accurately, various secret horrors.

Hey, good for John King. The blue-eyed, silver-haired CNN guy who isn't Anderson Cooper, and who is famous for manipulating a giant iPhone to display election results, will get a four-hour Sunday show on CNN. Jon Klein calls him "the best political reporter of his generation," even though John King honestly just manipulates a giant fucking iPhone and talks about demographics. Media "critic" Howard Kurtz's "Reliable Source" show will be a part of this new show, as well, and we'll continue not watching CNN, because honestly it's worse than Fox, in its own way. [CNN]

Barack Obama's campaign has been the most successful end-run of the mainstream media machine in American politics. But the senator's plan to text-message his announcement of a running mate at 3 a.m. Saturday —- deliberately out of step with the MSM news cycle — was beaten to the punch by a collusion of two factions: Experienced reporters out to get the scoop, and people close to the politicians who didn't get the gig.