Who's the Dummy?

LOS ANGELES – In weeks before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom, some of Hollywood's elite spent more than a few hours speaking up about the war and the White House than they did actually performing.

In fact, taking potshots at President George W. Bush and his inner circle has become more in vogue than Botox for some stars.

To hear some celebrities tell it, the United States is being lead by "ignoramuses" and "idiots," or, as actress Jennifer Aniston said — "a blank idiot."

George Clooney called the president "dim." Martin Sheen said he thinks the whole administration is a bunch of "morons." Similar statements came from Sean Penn, Julia Roberts and Jessica Lange.

And while those and other Americans certainly have the right to say what they please, their statements have led some to wonder how qualified the Hollywood elite really are to make judgments about the president's intelligence.

For example, Bush received his undergraduate degree from Yale — despite his own admission about not being a star student. He then went on to Harvard, where he received an MBA.

Cher, meanwhile, who says the president is stupid, dropped out of school in the ninth grade.

Vice President Dick Cheney has both a bachelor's and a master's degree in political science.

Actresses Roberts and Aniston didn't make it past high school.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice graduated college cum laude when she was only 19 years old. She received her master's from Notre Dame a year later, and her doctorate, again cum laude, at the age of 25.

Actor Sheen didn't quite make it to college. Clooney, Lange, Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin all signed up and actually made it to class — before dropping out.

Variety magazine's Michael Speier says it's the media's fault for giving the celebrities a pulpit.

"The problem is that when we talk about that in the media we give weight to people who we never really gave weight to before," he said.

A college degree alone doesn't automatically make anyone a genius, of course. And many of America's greatest leaders and inventors never set foot on a university campus.

But, to tweak an old saying, some say that people who live in glass Malibu mansions, shouldn't throw stones.