cram sessions aren’t just for presidents anymore

We all know that Dubya failed his world-knowledge tests in the run-up to his presidency. (Obviously, his Yale non-studying habit stayed with him well into adulthood.)

Also, the other day, Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson, filling in on the NYT’s op-ed page, recounted the story of how he was called on to help educate another president:

In the summer of 1975, I was asked by Robert Goldman, President Ford’s in-house intellectual, to participate in a discussion on ethnicity at the White House, one of a series put on for the edification of the president.

America was then going through the so-called ethnic revival. Talk about the recovery of threatened ethnic heritage was everywhere, the beginnings of what later evolved into the multicultural and identity movement. Politicians had been quick to grasp the movement’s potential, and it would become a controversial issue in the subsequent presidential election.

I gathered from our conversation that the unusual nature of Ford’s ascent to the presidency had prevented the normal electoral process of learning that transformed local politicians into potential statesmen, and that the discussions were a crash course substitute.

Okay, we’ve established, more or less, that politicians don’t need to do all that boring reading when they can get the world’s biggest brains to spoon-feed them what they need to know.

But did you know that Brangelina put themselves through the same paces?

On Dec. 9, several of Columbia University’s top climate scientists gathered at their colleague Jeffrey Sachs’ townhouse on West 85th Street to help a new student catch up on the latest research on climate change. Of course, no mere undergraduate could command four hours of the professors’ attention on this unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon. Don’t be ridiculous. No, this session was for Professor Sachs’ good pal, Brad Pitt, who was looking to expand his philanthropic profile beyond adopting Third World children with Angelina Jolie, another Sachs protégé.

According to Paul Wachter, of the New York Observer, this is a good thing, because empty-headed celebrities are otherwise, you know, empty-headed. And having had a one-on-one with a real honest-to-goodness intellectual might rub off on Pitt. Next time he’s asked about climate change,

he might have something truly meaningful to say.

Un-huh.

On the other hand, he probably will not make a fool of himself the way Tom Cruise did.

Which is probably more to the point…