Those in the news business, not unlike you and your Aunt Grace, are victims of obsessive-compulsive behavior. Or, as we used to say, creatures of habit.

For instance, when news reporters hear that someone in the community is celebrating his or her 100th birthday, they’re compelled to run out and ask them the secret of such a long life. Then they put these answers in the paper or on TV. Often it will be something like “a shot or two of whisky every day is what’s done it.” We, for the most part, believe this to be true. That’s why today many of us think that if we have a couple of drinks a day, we’ll be in good health right through old age. These answers, of course, only prove that old age is no impediment to snappy replies and a sense of humor.

More recently, the media have become obsessed with telling us how fat we Americans have become. We’re hearing more stories like the one about the fellow in Wisconsin who says he’s put on a few pounds because he’s eaten 23,000 Big Macs over the past 36 years. That’s almost two Big Macs a day. He’s sure he’s eaten that many because he’s kept his receipt for every one of them in a big box under his bed. The only day he can remember not having one or two Big Macs is the day his mother died. He says she never wanted him to eat so many burgers. So to honor her memory he skipped a day. This is a case of obsessive-compulsive news media reporting on an obsessive-compulsive receipt-saving hamburger eater.

Reading and hearing so much about how fat Americans are getting and how many fast-food burgers we’re eating is one reason why the Los Angeles City Council says it wants to help fight obesity by stopping any new fast-food place from opening up in South Los Angeles. That’s where some of the city’s poorest people live and the City Council says they eat too much fast food. Who says government doesn’t have an answer for everything? New York and other cities are talking now about following L.A.’s example. Eventually we may need special rooms in public places where people will have to eat their burgers, just as we now have special rooms for people who smoke.

In this fight against obesity, some, of course, think that fast food is the wrong target. They believe that increased alcohol consumption is making America fat. As an example, they like pointing out that the sale of Irish whiskey in the United States is way up . . . by about 20 percent in 2007 from the year before. We drank more than 860,000 cases of the stuff last year. Bushmills, an Irish whiskey distillery, says it has had to start running three shifts a day, seven days a week, to keep up with us.

Maybe we haven’t been able to drink enough to deplete the supply, but we’ve got them working nights.

—Truman Taylor

( TrumanBTaylor@aol.com)