The economy’s doing its Titanic impression, nobody wants to play with Tiny Tim, and now his NCAA hoops bracket is shot to smithereens.

Is it any wonder the Big O’s going gray?

The Coronated One takes after his 2 predecessors when it comes to rapid acquisition of the Salt ‘n Pepa look.

Clinton went from  Mongrel Half-Brown to Silver in 2 years. George W. Bush morphed from Heavily Flecked, Blended Black-Brown to Neutral Gray almost overnight.

“I started noticing it toward the end of the campaign and leading up to inauguration,” Deborah Willis told the New York Times.

The co-author of “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs,” Willis examined 5,000 Big O jpegs last year alone.

Obama’s gray-outs wax and wane with his haircuts, which happen every other week. His barber, who goes by Zariff and that’s it, is on record denying the flip-flops are caused by the Big O dyeing his hair.

“His hair is 100 percent natural,” Zariff thundered to the New York Times. “He wouldn’t get it colored.”

Obama claims his staff hasn’t been ribbing him about the unfortunate turn of events, but surely Rahm Emanuel wouldn’t miss an opportunity slip in a shiv here and there.

Meanwhile, noted authorities are eager to weigh in on the matter. For Walt Frazier, who knew a thing or two about cool back in the day, it was a no-brainer. Obama should dye his hair.

It’s “no play for Mr. Gray,” Clyde warned.

Mom and dad can’t handle liquor the way they used to even though they think they can, and it’s a matter of time before the same fate befalls younger revelers.

That’s what Rebecca Gilbertson and her team at U. Kentucky concluded after performing a randomized double-blind experiment to evaluate the impact of age on intoxication at alcohol levels typically associated with social, or moderate drinking.

The scientists probably had no trouble recruiting 42 adults between 50-74 years of age and another 26 adults between 25 and 35 for the study. Participants owned up to drinking in moderation at least once a month.

Gilbertson’s group used controlled alcohol administration techniques known to produce breath alcohol concentrations similar to a bout of social drinking (40 mg/100 ml), administered psychomotor coordination tests and collected self-reported data regarding perceived intoxication and impairment.

They did that once while blood alcohol levels were rising in participants’ bloodstreams and once while they were descending.

It turned out that on the ascending limb of the trip, older adults exhibited more psychomotor impairment and tended to underestimate how impaired they were compared with the hotshot 25-35 year-olds.

The results “reinforce common knowledge that self-reported measures of alcohol intoxication may not provide an accurate reflection of performance outcomes and that older adults may be impaired even at a moderate dose of alcohol,” wrote the authors. 

“This potential disconnection between self-reported and behavioral effects of alcohol may have significant implications for public health and safety, particularly among active, older social drinkers.”

The write-up is in Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

When Giant Food began offering free antibiotics to shoppers in the DC area, it was just catching up with competitors like ShopRite, Stop and Shop and Wegman’s.

We “are committed to improving the health and wellness in our communities during the winter season when families are susceptible to coughs, colds, and bacteria-borne illnesses,” the Giant’s Andrea Astrachan said back in December at the time of the launch.

Forget that antibiotics don’t work against viruses, the proud sponsors of cold and flu season!

Don’t worry that inappropriate use of antibiotics spreads MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus which can maim, even kill!

Overlook the study in Clinical Infectious Diseases which found that antibiotics trigger 142,000 ED visits per year, mostly to deal with allergic reactions!

“Taking an antibiotic when you don’t need it won’t help you, and may in fact do more harm than good,” Anne Gershon understated to BurrillReport.

The president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America added that “at a time when… few new antibiotics are being developed, supermarkets need to be responsible in how they promote antibiotics.”

Recently, the IDSA and the CDC asked supermarkets to help promote a CDC-sponsored consumer education program known as “Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work.”

Meanwhile Jamie Miller, Giant Food’s public affairs director reminded everyone that the policy is helpful to consumers battered by The Great Economic Crisis.

“Doctors who prescribe antibiotics are…making decisions on what they feel is best…and oftentimes that is a prescription for an antibiotic and we are there to help.” Miller told Burrill.

And next year maybe Giant Foods’ll just go with a flu shot campaign and leave it at that.