And the winner is.... Fox

After weeks of lobbying, before Helen Thomas' vacated seat was even cold, the unanimous decision is Fox gets a seat in the front row in the White House briefing room. They don't get Helen's actual seat, that goes to AP and Fox gets AP's old seat. And there were more rearrangements in this game of amusical chairs, none of which will improve the utility of the briefings. Me, I don't care where they sit. This bizarre high school cafeteria level obsession with the seating arrangements won't make the questions any better.

I'm not at all surprised that Fox won this one. It's got nothing to do with journalism; it's all about the Benjamins. Fox kicks in the cash to pay for the pool coverage by the White House paparazzi so now we'll have a better view of Major joining his compatriots in tweeting their way through the briefings.

What they need is a better system for calling on the correspondents. There are people in the back who never get called on, while the prima donnas in the front row repeatedly ask the same stupid questions over and over in the vain hope they'll get Gibbs to say something different. That's the defintion of something...