An acquaintance e-mailed to let me know there was such a person as Ariel Dorfman (a Chilean currently at Duke), that he had written an unintentionally hilarious column for the Los Angeles Times called “Brainy Candidates Need Not Apply,” and that he was flatly suggesting Senator Kerry was too smart to be president; that he was so smart he intimidated the average voter. (That’s you, dummy.) That sort of uncontained snobbery is just too good to be true, I thought, and clicked on the link to see for myself. As it turned out, the synopsis given to me was right...