Brains over brawn?

In the "The Simpsons" episode "The Way We Was," dweeb Artie Ziff wins election as prom king: "Fellow classmates. Instead of voting for some athletic hero, or a pretty boy, you have elected me, your intellectual superior as your king. Good for you!" Except for victorious folks like Bill Gates (Geek incarnate) and Barack Obama (Spock incarnate), this almost never happens in real life as the New Republic's Jon Chait wryly noted recently. Hah.