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What is it with this White House and publicly calling out conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh? If you recall, back in January 2009 President Barack Obama told Republican congressional leaders to quit listening to Limbaugh if they wanted to get things done. It's happened once again. During the White House daily press briefing on July 29, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took another couple of jabs Limbaugh - this time over the auto manufacturer bailout. In responding to a question concerning charges of "socialism," Gibbs went right after Limbaugh. "Look, I'll say this - Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away," Gibbs said. "Rush Limbaugh and others saw a million people that work at these factories that worked at these part suppliers that supported communities and thought that we should all just walk away. The president didn't think that walking away from a million jobs in these communities made a lot of economic sense." But later during the briefing, Gibbs made the second Limbaugh jab more personal.  "I'll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year and a half ago and wanted to walk away from a million explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision and I think, better yet, ask them if they had that decision to make, if they would do it all over again - knowing that the $60 billion [the government loaned the auto industry] are on track to get paid back, knowing there's a million people still employed, knowing that we are adding 55,000 jobs, that plants are working through what is normally a planned ‘summer shut-down,' and that we are creating the jobs of the future, whether they thought the decision they made 16 or 18 months ago differed than that of the President of the United States and whether they still stand by it," Gibbs said. "And then you should ask Mr. Limbaugh, I don't know what kind of car he drives but I can bet it's not an F-150." However, as Elizabeth Williamson pointed out for The Wall Street Journal pointed out, the F-150 truck is made by Ford, a company that didn't get federal bailout funds.

As our readers know, to celebrate the 5th anniversary of NewsBusters, we have started a weekly Five for Five feature to countdown the blog's top twenty five posts. Last week we began with the top five media flubs caught by NewsBusters and on Friday we continue with the top five posts embarrassing the media. As part of the anniversary celebration, we have picked out a couple posts from each of the five categories and asked the authors to reflect back on writing them up. They share their thoughts on how they caught the particular media moment and describe the impact their post had. We begin with a look back at two of the top media flubs: "Up a Creek: Accusing Bush of Video Stunt, 'Today' Gets Caught in Stunt of Its Own" by Mark Finkelstein and "Dog Urinates on Katie Couric Ice Scultpture" by Scott Whitlock. 

Perhaps it's the proximity of North Dakota, Ed Schultz's home state, to Minnesota but the MSNBC host has an identifiable fixation on a certain conservative Republican congresswoman from Minnesota. On his July 29 program "The ED Show," Schultz once again attacked Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. This time this wizard of smart attacked her for loving to get "her mug out there." But if that's a crime then Schultz is an accomplice.  "Well, that's Michele Bachmann said, she wanted to create a ‘receptacle' for the Tea Party and so, this might be the first thing in the ‘receptacle,'" Schultz said. "I think she is doing it to stay visible. She loves getting her mug out there, she loves the visibility. She was rather an obscure congresswoman until she made an asinine comment on ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews' about investigating members of Congress. That pretty much put her on the map, Roy." Perhaps that put her on the map in Schultz's view, but he's done his part to keep her there. According to a tally of "The Ed Show" episodes compiled from a Nexis search since July 29, 2009, Bachmann has been a subject of Schultz's scorn 71 times. And Schultz's guest, Roy Sekoff, the founding editor of The Huffington Post played up the left-wing meme that Bachmann, by supporting Rep. Roy Blunt over Missouri state Sen. Chuck Purgason for the GOP nomination in the open Missouri U.S. Senate race, she has tarnished her brand. (Polling data indicates Blunt should cruise to a win in this race as things stand right now.) "She got the addiction to it, right - exactly," Sekoff said. "But look at the blowback and what's happening now is the Tea Partiers are mad at her because she's supporting some of her brethren in Congress. And they're like, ‘Wait a minute - you're our darling until you don't go along with our candidates.' And I think, she's feeling this thing about that a little bit right now."  Schultz's show has been an MSNBC staple since 2009, but continues to lag far behind its rival "Special Report" on the Fox News Channel. One common thread in Schultz's show over the year - the attacks on Bachmann. Apparently it's just not a ratings winner.

This is one way to get longer-form content on YouTube: Google’s video giant has just increased the maximum length of uploads on the site from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. What prompted the change? Here’s the site’s explanation, via product manager Joshua Siegel: Well, we’ve spent significant resources on creating and improving our state-of-the-art Content ID system and many other powerful tools for copyright owners. Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today. I’m not sure I understand that. And perhaps someone from YouTube will tack another crack at it down the line. But here’s my best guess at translating: We used to cap videos at 10 minutes in part because it made it harder for people to upload entire movies or TV shows to the site, and that made copyright owners less mad at us. Now they like us a lot more, so we’re bumping up the limit by 50 percent. Bumping up that limit also increases bandwidth and storage costs; theoretically the longer clips will also give the site more chance to sell more ads. Wonder how this impacts Google sales chief Nikesh Arora’s recent pronouncement that YouTube is “is on the verge of imminent profitability”. Meanwhile, I don’t think I watch many clips on YouTube that approach the 10-minute limit, anyway. But I do like this long clip (so much that I think I’ve embedded it twice before): Six minutes and 27 seconds of Steve Wonder jamming on Sesame Street:

Barack might have some 'splaining to do . . . Appearing on The View, the president explained to Barbara Walters that he chose to come on the program because it's a show Michelle actually watches. According to PBO, the First Lady is "like eh" about news shows, grabbing the clicker [see screencap after jump] and turning away from them.Was it really necessary for the President to dis his wife's interest in current events to explain his presence on the show?  Somehow I sense that a Republican president saying something similar would come in for a heap of feminist criticism.  Transcript after the jump.Willie Geist introduced the segment on today's Morning Joe.WILLIE GEIST: A lot of people wondering why he went on the The View, what's behind all this. He answered that question.BARBARA WALTERS: You've gone through a little beat of a beating the last month. Do you really think that being on a show with a bunch of women, five women who never shut up, is going to be calming?BARACK OBAMA: That is the, look, I was trying to find a show that Michelle actually watched.  All those news shows, she's like "eh, let me get the clicker."We thought Mrs. Obama was proud of her image as a Princeton/Harvard alum—an intelligent, well-informed woman, passionately concerned about current events.  Will she be happy with her husband portraying her as someone who goes for the clicker to turn off news shows and tune in a women's gab fest?