Ted Kennedy was among the first to celebrate the good news. The cameras caught up with him at his favorite restaurant -- Burger and Brew and Jelly Donuts, Too.
"Mpfff," Kennedy said triumphantly, his mouth leaking just a smidgen of raspberry mixed, I believe, with ketchup. Liz Taylor, who has a booth there named after her, was sitting at his table. Ted and Liz were both all smiles (well, actually, not just smiles; there were also very noticeable, um, dimples.)
Why shouldn't they be happy?
Scientists are now saying that the other-weighted should no longer be blamed for their problems.
It turns out, they are victims of a flawed gene -- one which leads, inevitably, to those easy-fit, even-Roseanne-could-squeeze-inside-here jeans.
The gene is called ob -- short for obese -- which is supposed to signal the brain that there has been sufficient fat intake for the body to thrive. For some people, those who have an overactive ob, this begins to work after two bites of lettuce, whereupon they push their plate away and race to the gym. You know these people. You hate them.
The problem comes if you've got an ob that just can't be bothered. Sometime before, say, your third cheeseburger, old Mr. Ob is supposed to be screaming, "Yo, lardo, save some room for lunch."
If your ob refuses to play, you end up looking like the jump-suited Elvis (who, by the way, after hearing the news about Michael and Lisa Marie's apparent split, said, "I'm just glad I lived long enough to see this happen.") But it wasn't E's fault he was other-weighted. And it's not yours either. These scientists say your genes determine your weight in the same way they determine your height.
In other words, bring on the Cherry Garcia and let's par-tay.
Now, how did the scientists make this discovery? In the usual way -- with mice. They found this one fat mouse, now famously pictured across America.
Many of us had never seen a fat mouse. We always see the Kate Moss variety of mouse, just as skinny and cute as hell, scurrying across the kitchen floor, leaving little love notes as they go.
In the lab, though, it's different. In the lab, you've got skinny mice. They're the guys who have to run through mazes all day. They're skinny, they're obsessive and later they work on Wall Street.
But you also have mice who smoke. They get cancer. Mice who drink. They have heart attacks. Mice who sleep with their mother-in-law's auto mechanic. They end up on Ricki Lake.
This one fat mouse -- his name is Mort, and he will not drink Lite beer, no matter what -- blamed it all on his reluctant ob gene. The next thing you knew, Mort is being written up in scientific magazines, and other-weighted people are waiting for a miracle drug that will put Jenny Craig out of business.
But do we need all skinny people?
How will anything ever end if there's no fat lady? Instead, we'll have to say, it ain't over till the woman with the chemically altered gene sings.
What would happen to the Big Really Is Beautiful line of plus-sized clothing?
Or to the joke writers when Clinton pops an ob-pill instead of a french fry?
One-third of us are now officially designated as obese, meaning 20 percent over the ideal body weight. That's their ideal. My ideal weight is any time when my belt still fits around my waist.
Here is a true fact: When Oprah loses weight, she also loses ratings. That's because when she's skinny she looks so good it's scary. Fifty years from now, the fat Oprah stamp wins in a walk.
Who doesn't like plump? Ask yourself this: Do you really want to live in a world where St. Nick's belly no longer shakes like a bowl full of jelly?