June 10, 2010--Cold Seat

The Helen Thomas silliness continues.

First, as noted here yesterday, no one in the press is taking a long look at her remarkable career, including how she paved the way for women to move toward more equal status with male reporters and columnists. When she began her career in journalism, how many women were featured political writers? How many anchored the news on TV? How many were to be seen at presidential press conferences? How many got to have one-on-one interviews with the presidents? Simple, sad answer--none. Of course she is not alone responsible for the advances we have seen; but she contributed mightily to them.

And after her fall earlier this week, when she intemperately called for Jews "to get the hell out of Palestine," pretty much all the news about that was about that. There was no context whatsoever. Nothing about her long-standing and trenchant criticism of Israeli government policy. She was treated as if she was exposed as an anti-Semite and calling for the resumption of the Holocaust.

Then yesterday, as the story continued, the press shifted its attention to its favorite subject--itself.

Many of the stories were about Helen Thomas' reserved literal seat at the center of the front row in the White House briefing room. Even though it hasn't yet grown cold, there is a mad scramble for it.

In case you missed these stories, one from the Washington Post is linked below.

Also missing from much public consciousness is the fact that all seats in the briefing room are reserved. Not just Helen Thomas'. In the coveted front row, for example, with their own reserved seats, from left to right, are NBC, the Associated Press, CBS, ABC, Reuters, and CNN. There is something called the White House Press Association (the group that sponsors its own silly dinner each year to which the president is expected to come in order to be "roasted" and then deliver his own standup comedy act) that makes these coveted assignments.

Arrayed in the second of seven rows, behind the TV elite, are seats for Fox News (more about them in a moment) and Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and AP and CBS Radio. To members of the press having an assigned seat is a big deal. First and foremost, reporters' mothers can see them on CSPAN. Then, did you know this, if you have a seat in the first or second row it is pretty much a given that press secretary Robert Gibbs will call on you during his daily briefings and at presidential press conferences (which with Obama seem to occur once every 10 months--FDR had three or four a week), if they occur in the briefing room, this means that you are pretty much guaranteed that you will get called on to ask a question.

And, if you are anywhere behind the third row, you have to be satisfied by just having a seat (everyone else has to stand) because maybe once a year you'll be lucky enough to get called on by Gibbs or, better, Obama. Back in the boonies one finds the poor Dallas Morning News, the Christian Broadcast Network, and the Washington Examiner among other lesser lights.

Does this remind you of anything? To me it feels like elementary school where the wise-ass kids spent all day waving their hands frantically in front of the teacher in a desperate attempt to get her attention and to show off how smart they were.

So the mad scramble for Helen Thomas' not-yet-cold seat is underway. In a rare act of gallantry, CNN, the last media outlet to be moved up to the front row, is already on record as saying Fox News should get Thomas' glaringly empty seat. Yes, CNN is calling for Fox, its hated rival, to move to front row center. (Or at least the front row since there is talk about doing some shifting around so as not to have Fox right under Gibbs' nose. They don't pay him enough for that.)

CNN is advocating Fox because when CNN got moved up to prime time Fox did not object; and now CNN, good liberals that they are, is wanting to return the favor. CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry said, "When CNN bid for the front row in 2007, Fox could have challenged it and had a knock-down, drag-out fight like the one we might have this time. But they did the gentlemanly thing and said CNN had more seniority. I've got to honor that commitment."

What a guy.

And wouldn't it be poetic irony that as Obama's presidency flounders in part because of all the unsubstantiated ranting about him on Fox by the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Fox-paid personality Sarah Palin, that Fox as an institution should be thus honored.

Finally, for history buffs--

The current White House briefing room used to be the White House swimming pool. It was built by the March of Dimes so that Franklin Roosevelt, who had polio and as a consequence was paralyzed from the waist down, could exercise. Richard Nixon, who was never known to disrobe, had it filled in and installed a single-lane bowling alley for himself and a lounge and briefing room for the press. Later, the lounge was banished to the basement (no one on any president's staff wants to share the first floor with the pesky press) and the briefing room was enlarged to it current 49-seat configuration.

Oh, I almost forgot, the space of course was a swimming pool when John Kennedy was president. According to Seymour Hersh in his biography of JFK, Dark Camelot, it was used almost daily by the chief executive. He was anything but paralyzed from the waist down, and Hersch reliably reports that it was the site of frequent sex orgies.

How fitting as now another form of self-gratification is underway in that very room.