This is news. No really, it is!

Imagine yourself being a White House news correspondent. So many issues are on the plate of the president and of the nation and you get to report on those stories: the Gulf oil spill, Israel, Afghanistan, Mexico, unemployment, I could go on ad infinitum.

None such stories of the day are as important right now to those pampered pundits though. No, the No. 1 burning question around the White House at the moment is who will get Helen Thomas’ chair?

If you will remember, crotchety old Ms. Thomas resigned as a columnist with Hearst a few days ago because she said some PI (politically incorrect) things about Jews and Jerusalem.

Because the 89-year-old news hen (Thanks to Dan Jenkins’ marvelous “Fast Copy”) was the longest-serving member of the Washington press corps she was awarded with the seat in the middle of the first row, directly in front of the podium. (And I always thought she sat there because she was too short.)

Fox News supposedly wants it. I suppose their correspondents cannot aptly insult the president or his flacks without seeing them close up.

That’s fine with me if Fox gets the vaunted chair. In fact, I really don’t give a damn who gets the chair. I remember covering presidential events in Crawford as a “local pool” member. We weren’t supposed to touch the catered breakfast worthy of a five-star New York hotel although I sometime did anyway. And in the White House press room, the supposed crème de la crème of the nation’s journalist worry about who is going to get the chair. After their rich breakfast of course.

All the great food you can eat, a good seat in the briefing room and just tons of self-importance too. What more could a journalist ask for?