*NOTE* This post describes the lewd act of ‘teabagging’ in an effort to illustrate the gravity of the comments by Anderson Cooper and others. Reader discretion is advised.

CNN golden child Anderson Cooper apologized to a group assembled at the Univervisty of California at Los Angeles for calling participants in the Tax Day Tea Party protests ‘teabaggers’ who engaged in ‘teabagging’, a suggestive term which describes a lewd sexual act whereby the testicles of one individual are placed into the mouth of another.

Cooper, who followed lock-step with the likes of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and countless anonymous liberal commentors on blogs, became the first to apologize for his immature and suggestive comments.

From the article:

Calling it a “stupid, silly, one-line aside,” he touched on the attention it received. “I think it’s an incorrect statement to say I was, in any way, trying to disparage legitimate protests,” said Cooper. “I don’t think it’s my job to disparage, or encourage, which oddly other networks seemed to be doing. Protest is the great right of all Americans, and it’s not my job in any way to make fun of people or disparage what they’re doing.”

Cooper said he regretted making the comment. “If people took offense to that and felt that I was disparaging their legitimate right to protest, and what they were doing, then that is something I truly regret, because I don’t believe in doing that,” he said. “Having this discussion just takes away from the real story.”

This just gets better and better.

How’s this for cable news domination – Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour from 6amET to MidnightET in both Total Viewers and the A25-54 demo for April 2009.

FNC had the top 11 cable news programs in Total Viewers and 12 of the top 15 in the demo. FNC is the #2 network in Total Viewers on all of cable.

From 9amET on, every program grew by more than 60% in the demo. The 5pmET hour, now occupied by Glenn Beck, is up 212% in the demo and up 128% in Total Viewers. Your World with Neil Cavuto is up 102% in the demo and up 60% in Total Viewers. On the Record with Greta Van Susteren is up 75% in demo and up 55% in Total Viewers. Also in demo: FOX Report is up 75%, Special Report 70%, The O’Reilly Factor 74% and Hannity 64%.

Fox & Friends has now been #1 for 90 consecutive months, Studio B with Shepard Smith for 80 consecutive months.

See other posts about the ratings war here.

From THR.com:

First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC Uni CEO Jeff Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies.

Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not to say about politics.

During the woman’s follow-up question, her microphone was apparently cut off. A short time later, Waters asked a question and his mic was cut, too.

“The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt,” one attendee said. “Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it.”

When he got the floor, Waters focused his question about MSNBC on Olbermann’s interview of actress Janeane Garofalo, who likened conservatives to racists and spoke of “the limbic brain inside a right-winger.”

“He (Waters) was complaining that Olbermann didn’t bother to challenge her,” another GE shareholder said.

From the desk of Matt Drudge, the following numbers reflect the viewership of the major cable news channels on Tuesday, March 10, 2009:

FOXNEWS O’REILLY – 3,212,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY – 2,376,000
FOXNEWS BECK – 2,331,000
FOXNEWS BAIER – 2,274,000
FOXNEWS SHEP – 2,044,000
FOXNEWS GRETA – 1,965,000
CNN COOPER – 1,214,000
CNN KING – 1,185,000
MSNBC MADDOW – 1,041,000
CNNHN GRACE – 986,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN – 928,000

And to mathematicize this for those of you who are not as proficient as the next guy… Bill O’Reilly had nearly three times as many viewers as the next-highest ranked cable news channel. Oh, and should I even mention the fact that Fox News swept the top six spots in the cable news ratings for this particular night.

POW!