The glorious fatness of David Brooks

Most times I just scowl or ignore the neo-cons' "scruffy little mascot," as the barmiest inhabitant of the NY Times opinion page is best described. (someone besides me described him that way, I swear, but Google disagrees :-/ )

Brooks is gloating today about how apparently fat people actually get to live longer. As a ball o' Establishment Corpulence himself, he's delighted that life is so unfair for the skinny ones like me. But perhaps my all-cheeseburger diet will pay dividends for decades!

I thought this was funny, especially the Hitchens bit. So in a rare moment i will turn a few bytes over to Brooks:

I've been happy because as a member of the community of low-center-of-gravity Americans, I find that a lifetime of irresponsible behavior has been unjustly rewarded. If this study is correct, I'll be ordering second helpings on into my 90's while all those salad-munching health nuts who have been feeling so superior in their spandex pants and cutoff T-shirts will be dying of midriff pneumonia and other condescension-related diseases.

I've been happy because now there will inevitably be a shift in the fashion winds, favoring members of the Zaftig Corps. Sports enjoyed by people with Rubenesque proportions, like floating, will come into vogue. More people will appreciate the thigh-rubbing musical rhythms you hear when overweight people wear corduroys. More people will realize we should all be patterning our lifestyle decisions on those made by Christopher Hitchens.

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.

And he will be back to his incontinent rambling next week, soiling himself with dribblings of whatever cocktail circuit swill winds through his porous and transfat-addled brain.

As long as I am eating my own soul and crediting rightwing humor, the "Take that hippy! Four more years" line of merchandise @ cafepress also has a certain Zeitgeist quality. Obesity and arrogance--at least the empire knows where it's at.

Check out the sweet new Google satellite imagery. Macalester from Space, In Color! Yeah, you can see the red bricks of the plaza in front of the Campus Center. Our house is a little to the west, next to the movie theater... Check out even more interesting Google Satellite Maps people have noted. I suggest Duluth because it has an interesting orthogonal appearance.