Talk about interesting news. The hoity-toity men’s magazine Esquire conducted a poll recently that found a majority of American men would rather have dinner with Condoleezza Rice than with Julia Roberts or Jessica Simpson.

We’ve been spending more time than we should figuring out what this means. Our office barometer on all things male wants to review Esquire’s demographics before weighing in. He wonders if the magazine’s readership is skewed sharply toward affluent Republicans. The implications of this turn what might be great news into so-so news, and just because Esquire’s readers may want to share a meal with the secretary of state doesn’t mean they’d want to date Hillary Clinton. “Nobody,” our guy here says, “wants to date Hillary Clinton.”

This crushes any joy smart women might have felt about men picking a diplomat over a movie star. So what if Julia Roberts has great legs? And a great body, face and hair to match? Not that Condoleezza Rice is ugly or Julia Roberts is dumb. They’re not. But it was comforting to think men are more intrigued by women who can bring heads of rogue governments to their knees than those who merely turn heads with their looks – even if it may be all a partisan illusion.

I can understand why Esquire’s readers aren’t rushing to date Jessica Simpson, who I thought was Bart’s cartoon sibling until I accidentally heard the other day – before I could grab the TV remote or cover my ears and sing “I can’t hear you” – that she had been spotted crying on the beach in Australia. Wait, I told myself, a cartoon character can’t cry on the beach in Australia, or for that matter anywhere else, except in animation, so this chick-a must be a real person. That was a huge relief in itself. I’d wondered why the morning news programs were devoting so much air time to a caricature someone had drawn. It seemed wrong, but then so did the morning-after interviews with the people Donald Trump fired from “The Apprentice.”

I am, however, flat-out stunned that Julia Roberts didn’t lead this poll A guy I know owns VHS and DVD copies, duplicates in some cases, of every single movie Julia Roberts ever made, even lame releases like “I Love Trouble.” I can’t believe he’d turn down a date with her for a chance to talk to Condoleezza Rice about what we’re going to do about Iran, but then, he doesn’t read Esquire, either.

As it turns out, the Esquire poll was more interesting than illuminating (and writing about its findings filled this space, so it wasn’t completely useless). From now on, if I want insight on how the male mind works, I’ll just ask the man’s man here. And what he said about men keeping current on the latest antics of Bart Simpson’s sister and others of her ilk is basically this: They don’t.

If women are smart, and I know we are, we’ll make this movement co-ed.It’s one thing to pay for the privilege of being entertained by these people with our hard-earned cash, another to hand them our pride by becoming sycophantic every time they reveal a painful hangnail or, this ripped from a real-life headline, hang their babies over a balcony for the paparazzi to photograph. You have to wonder, would Michael Jackson have endangered his child if the media hadn’t been there to film it? OK, bad example. The point is this: As with gremlins and monsters, don’t feed ’em after midnight.

And don’t date them.