More Glee from NYTimes About the Prospects of Overweight People

For the second consecutive day, a New York Times columnist seems to be in the throes of ecstasy over a recent report indicating that, short of being obese, overweight people live longer than underweight ones. David Brooks explains why the research results so please him:

Mostly, I'm happy on an existential level. I like to be reminded that the universe is basically crooked. This is what the zero-tolerance brigades and all the better living gurus never quite get. They're busy trying to mold everybody into lifelong valedictorians, who spend their adulthood as carb counters and responsible flossers - the sort of organized folk who actually read legal documents before they sign them.

In reality, life is perverse and human beings don't get what they deserve. The people with the worst grades start the most successful businesses. The shallowest people end up blissfully happy and they are so vapid they don't even realize how vapid they are because vapidity is the only trait that comes with its own impermeable obliviousness system. The people regarded as lightweights, like F.D.R., J.F.K. and Ronald Reagan, make the best presidents, while you - so much more thoughtful and better read - would be a complete disaster.

True or not, it is funny, an opportunity for those of us deeply ensconced in middle age to laugh in the face of our expanding waistlines.

[Check out an earlier column I wrote about my cackling metabolism thingy.]