Yeah, tell him that. (Image via Wikipedia)

This is the worst health news ever. It’s worse than eating and drinking things you like will kill you. It’s worse than smoking will kill you. (mainly because I don’t smoke) Now they’re telling us sitting will kill you.

Sitting is what I do best. And most.

I sit to eat. I sit to read and write. I sit in cars, taxis, trains and planes. I sit to nap. I sit to …OK, there’s no need to go there.

Sitting is what I’m doing right now and what I will be doing later and what I’ll be doing after that.

And when I’m finally done, I plan to sit down and rest for a while.

The sitting story is No. 1 on today’s New York Times most-read list. It is headlined “Stand Up While You Read This!” Well, I refused to and I hope you did too.

I am taking a strong stand position against the no-sitting extremists. I ask for your support, my fellow sitters. And I know there are millions of you. I’ve seen you on your sofas, your couches, your love seats and divans; I’ve seen you leaning back in your Aeron chairs, your feet up on the desk.

We will organize a sit-in. Maybe even a national sit-down strike.

Our slogan: Sit happens.

Our icons: Sitting Bull and Whistler’s Mother. Someone start making posters.

This isn’t just about laziness, although laziness is underrated. It’s about our economy. Just for two examples, what happens to the chair industry? What happens to baby sitters?

I’ll probably be accused of conspiracy-theory-mongering but it seems to me a question has to be asked: Might not the podiatry lobby be behind this thing?

Now I believe in freedom of the press as much as anyone but I tell you that this article in the Times goes too far and the writer should have been executed upon submitting it.

Or at least chastised. An editor should have told her: “Siddown, you’re rocking the boat.”

What she did is almost literally like crying fire in a crowded theater. Because when you do that, what happens is people stand up, the precondition to panic and mayhem.

When people remain seated, they don’t commit as many wrongs. If you want to kill or rob someone, you usually have to stand up first. History tells us that sooner or later, standing will lead to a fall, especially in winter, with all that ice around.

Sitting, on the other hand, is restful and nice.

The idea of giving it up, even for a few minutes…well, I just can’t stand it.

George Herman Ruth, Jr. (Image via Wikipedia)

News item: Spring training under way.

In honor of baseball and its magical propensity for generating meaningless arguments, I hereby present the All-Nickname Team.

Ground rules: The nickname must be so powerful that in effect, it became the player’s first name, replacing his given name. Modifier monikers and parentheticals, though treasured, are disqualified: Sorry, Shoeless and Joltin’ Joe, Hammerin’ Hanks Aaron and Greenberg. Abject apologies to Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown and Wade “Chicken Man” Boggs. Regrets to Wee Willie “Hit ‘Em Where They Ain’t” Keeler and Poosh ‘Em Up Tony Lazzeri.

Ideally, these nonpareils of nomenclature must be both superior players at their position and have the best nickname. Of course, how often does one achieve the ideal?

The lineup:

C: Yogi Berra

1B: Cap Anson

2B: Red Schoendienst

SS: Pee Wee Reese, Rabbit Maranville (tie)

3B: Pie Traynor

OF: Babe Ruth

OF: Hack Wilson

OF: Duke Snider

DH: Heinie Manush

RHP: Satchel Paige

RHP: Dizzy Dean

RHP: Catfish Hunter

LHP: Rube Waddell

LHP: Whitey Ford

LHP: Preacher Roe

Closer: Goose Gossage

Pinch Hitter: Home Run Baker

Pinch Runner: Cool Papa Bell

Up for a cup of coffee: Vinegar Bend Mizell, Cookie Lavagetto, Daffy Dean, Kiki Cuyler, Ducky Medwick,  Schoolboy Rowe. Germany Schaefer, Bobo Newsom, Boog Powell, Chili Davis, Dixie Walker, Mookie Wilson

Manager: Casey Stengel

Commissioner: Happy Chandler

Umpire: Jocko Conlan

Announcer: Red Barber

Sportswriter: Red Smith

National Anthem: Bing Crosby accompanied by the Count Basie Band

Refreshment Stand: Toots Shor

Let the arguing begin!

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Supplementary Notes:

The inspiration for this exercise: When I was a kid and a Brooklyn Dodger fan, the Yankee and Giant fans would always crow about how their CFs were better than ours, even though ours was pretty damn good. Well, Duke, it wasn’t easy but I finally found a way to put you ahead of Mick and the Say-Hey Kid. Got Pee Wee and Preacher in there, too! We rule.

Thanks to my baseball advisory panel: Mort Sheinman, Ben Patrusky, Bruce Weber, Avery Corman, Vic Ziegel, Robert Bazell, Mike Neill

After a week that saw an unhinged tax protester fly his plane into an IRS office, a loony neurobiologist shoot three fellow professors, a crackpot at the CPAC convention call for the hanging of a U.S. senator and Glenn Beck being Glenn Beck, the question must be asked: Is America harboring a dangerously high percentage of nut jobs?

The answer, according to an informal survey I took among three or four friends and a bike messenger who almost ran me over on Eighth Avenue yesterday, is a resounding yes. This country is crazier than ever.

Every few years, the American Psychiatric Association updates its compendium, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which lists every known mental disorder and each time, it gets bigger. The fifth edition of the DSM is out in 2013 and I’m afraid no one will be able to lift it.

Next question: What are we going to do about it?

We have some of the world’s finest psychiatrists and psychologists here with an absolutely spectacular selection of drugs but they mostly treat the slightly crazy. The totally crazy won’t go. Problem is they’re too crazy to know they’re crazy.

One thing we might consider is bringing back the guys in white coats who carry butterfly nets. I don’t know if they ever really existed but you see them in old movies sometimes.

It would be nice if you could call 999 or something and report A Person Who Looks Like They’re About to Do Something Seriously Crazy and the white coats come running, net them, wrestle them into a straitjacket and bundle them off to an appropriate facility.

The beautiful part is that guys with butterfly nets look comical instead of sinister—you’d have to laugh when you saw them chasing a gibbering maniac–so they don’t up our paranoia quotient any further and make everyone even crazier. In fact, they’d provide comic relief. Bystanders would cheer and yell, “Go, white jackets! Grab that loony!” The laughter would release tension.

We all seem very tense these days.

A big part of the problem is politics. I have reported frequently on the alarming incidence of craziness on the right. But whether the American right wing is actively making people crazy or just serving as a clubhouse for the demented I’m not sure. I do know that right-wing craziness is the fastest-growing segment of the crazy demographic.

Right-wing insanity alone will probably take up about 50 percent of the new DSM.

You probably saw the news item that a significant number of Americans think Joe Stack is a hero.

Need I say more?

Well, I will, anyway. Hey, do you think it’s just a coincidence that a movie titled The Crazies is about to open? Or that Scorsese’s new one, Shutter Island, is set in a dark and scary lunatic asylum?

Our artists are trying to tell us something.

Here's Johnny (Image by Getty Images via Daylife)

I know I said I’d never write about the Olympics again but of course I was lying. You knew that, right? Because you’re the kind of hip, sophisticated reader who can tell when a guy is in anything-for-a-laugh mode. I sensed that about you immediately and I’m usually right about such things. Thus you also perceive that the headline above was just to get your attention and not at all meant to be taken seriously.

I’m at the gym pedaling furiously to nowhere when I notice Kornheiser on several screens talking about the ice skating, so I plug in.

I sort of almost know Kornheiser. We worked for the same newspaper (Newsday) back in the, well…a long time ago, and for a while we had parents in the same condo near Fort Lauderdale. So he’s my favorite sports commentator, both because I sort of almost know him and because I don’t watch any other sports commentators.

Also, Kornheiser is the kind of name Woody Allen would use in a New Yorker piece.

Tony is more evolved than his partner, who says these guys may be terrific athletes but when he sees someone wearing feathers he’s automatically hitting the remote, never mind they can spin four times in the air and land backwards on one skate. But the partner can be forgiven as he’s probably an ex-athlete and they have to do the macho dance or have wet towels snapped at them next time they visit the locker room.

What tickles me is when Kornheiser launches into a bit about how you’ve got to do the quadruple if you want to win the gold. This is apparently a big controversy in the men’s division. The Russian guy, Malenkov or Khrushchev or something like that, stated, and I quote him exactly, “Ptui on you flaming wimps who are not doing the quadruple! You go dress in women’s locker room! I spit on the babushka of your maternal grandmother. I eat your turnip for lunch!”

Don’t ask me the quadruple what? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t understand how anyone can even tell the quadruple from the triple.

What Brezhnev was doing there, Kornheiser says, was psyching out his opponents, which all the great athletes do, so good for him. Kornheiser’s no fool. If you want to do a successful sports show, you’ve got to have a big fat opinion on everything, figure skating included. Maybe even ice dancing. You also need a partner who has the opposite opinions.

Johnny Weir didn’t wear feathers but he did have a tassel flagrantly attached to his costume. I personally prefer costumes to uniforms on athletes because it gives the viewer one more thing to make fun of. I also like that skaters compete to music. I feel that pro football and basketball could benefit greatly from both these ideas and should adopt them immediately.

Johnny Weir is the Adam Lambert of the figure-skating world. Or maybe the Lady Gaga. Kornheiser said Johnny was beautiful to watch but the partner grimaced and said that’s not the word he would use. To me what’s really impressive about Weir is that he taught himself Russian after he fell in love with Russian skating and can now speak it so fluently that he can order a blini in Brooklyn.

If that’s true, it’s a bigger wow in my book than Andropov doing his quadruple.

He told me he doesn't even want it. (Image via Wikipedia)

Let’s blast yet another nutty right-wing concept to smithereens, shall we? I know there are thousands of them to slog through, with more being invented every day, but we must be resolute.

The Founding Fathers wanted America to be a Christian nation.

This is false for at least three different reasons (which are so obvious to any intelligent, educated person I shouldn’t even have to write this piece.)

1. If the Founding Fathers had wanted America to be a Christian nation, they would’ve said so. Plainly. Unambiguously. Right up front in the Constitution, you know, the supreme-law-of-the-land document: “Domestic tranquility! Three branches of government! Christian nation!” That’s what they would’ve said. Because it’s kind of a big deal, not something you forget to mention.

2. On most issues, the Founding Fathers didn’t speak with one voice. They disagreed on almost everything. They bickered and rolled their eyes and compromised. So to say “the Founding Fathers wanted this or that” is always a lie.  Unless maybe you say, “The Founding Fathers wanted Americans to grow tobacco and not have a king.”

3. Who cares what the Founding Fathers maybe sort of possibly cryptically wanted? We’ve changed plenty of things we do know they definitely, openly wanted, because they (thank you, guys) gave us the means to change things as the times changed.  We abolished slavery. We gave women the right to vote. We renamed the War Department the Defense Department because we discovered the art of public relations. The Founding Fathers thought men looked good in wigs and women in bustles. We don’t so we don’t wear them. In short, We do not have to do what we think the Founding Fathers wanted. Even if somehow we were able to text-message the Founding Fathers and found out that every last one of them really wanted the U.S. to be a theocracy with an ayatollah at its head and a statue of Jesus in every home, we still wouldn’t have to do it.

What set off this diatribe is an article in the NYT Sunday  Magazine headlined “Founding Fathers” which quickly went to No. 1 on the Most Popular list. Like all NYT Sunday Magazine articles, the piece is too long and frequently boring. It’s about the efforts of a flock of morons in Texas who want their children (and everyone else’s) to be taught religious propaganda instead of American history and so are campaigning to slant the schoolbooks. And of course they think the Founding Fathers would have been on their side.

I doubt it.

But I don’t care.