What’s the big deal about Harvard? I mean, you live in the Republic of Boston-Cambridge and you just can’t seem to escape talking about Harvard, or hearing about Harvard, or buying a tee-shirt with "Harvard" on it, in anticipation of you running for President of the United States or something.

Even when you escape from the Northeast, the "Harvard" thing won’t go away. Oh, Harvard, cool, lots of sons and daughters of famous people and lots of Nobel prize-winning professors of this and that.

I don’t know. Growing up on the farm in the Midwest, I never heard nothin’ about Harvard. At the end of the day, we knew that whether you were rich or poor, well-connected or clueless, a truck driver or a famous business newspaper columnist, when you got to college, you’d be sitting in uncomfortable chairs, listening to a graduate assistants blab on and on. Harvard? $4 trillion a year in tuition? It was a puzzle.

And then I moved to the Northeast, became neurotic like everybody else, and fell under the influence of Harvard guys. I’m tense. I’m miserable. I’m suspicious. That’s how Harvard likes it.

For instance, I was sitting around, proud of my country and pleased with that "cash for clunkers" thing, envisioning a nation driving around in little toy cars, with clean air despoiled only by the smell of discarded Chevy Suburbans in some car cemetery. But, Harvard could tell that I was happy. They weren’t going to put up with that.

So, Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics and gloomy stuff at Harvard, cranked out an essay suggesting that what was really going to happen was that we would all be so pleased with our new, high-mileage little putt-putts, that we would actually drive more than we had driven before, diminishing the advantage that was supposed to come from getting better mileage. "We should expect more driving from someone who is induced to buy a newer, more pleasant car that is cheaper to drive."

Oh. Damn. That’s sort of one of those "unintended consequences" things, isn’t it? Leave it to a Harvard guy to bring it up.

Coke Problem

So there I was, miserable and wondering whether Glaeser was right, when I realized that I was sipping a Diet Coke, which is a very good thing to be drinking, because the alternative is some sugar-riddled concoction that will give me and most other Americans diabetes and bulging bellies and stuff. I felt a little better.

Just then, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health patted me on the shoulder and warned me that I probably shouldn’t be drinking the Diet Coke, because I was increasing my chances of having a heart attack or stroke or winning a fellowship to Harvard, where I would specialize in studying how to make myself miserable.

Yes, the sugar-free stuff apparently transforms your metabolism into the metabolism of a chipmunk and you get even hungrier and stuff yourself with fried chicken and pepperoni pizza.

In a gloomy little story in the Boston Globe, Willett reassured us that the diet stuff was "a whole lot better" than the sugary stuff, but you know what he was really up to: make us insecure and frightened as only those Harvard guys know how to do.

There’s no escape from the Harvard curse. Just when President Obama was at his most intense, Jesus-like popularity, announcing stimulus stuff that could only be matched by Paris Hilton stripping or something, along came Harvard economics professor Robert Barro, who told us in February that the stimulus package was a "terrible piece of legislation" that would drive us all to drink – probably diet soda.

Is there no relief from the Harvard gloom? Is there no one on campus who wakes up every day and sings, "Oh, what a beautiful morning"?

The best hope may be Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist who wrote a book called "Stumbling on Happiness," which sort of suggests that no matter how hard Harvard tries to make us miserable, we are resilient enough to overcome it and find happiness.

I hope so. In the meantime, I’m going over to MIT to relax. Those computer guys are funny and upbeat. Not like Harvard.