It’s a Classic Case of Scholarship

--William J. Bennett and Allan Bloom, two of higher education’s most caustic critics, are going to practice what they preach. Bennett, the outgoing education secretary, and Bloom, a University of Chicago professor and best-selling author, will sponsor summer seminars in the “great books” and humanities for a select group of 50 to 100 undergraduates, Bennett aide John Walters said. Bennett, who leaves office next week after 3 1/2 years as the government’s top educator, has often criticized colleges for not stressing the classics of history, literature and philosophy. And Bloom is the author of the best-selling diatribe, “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students.” The seminars will be one of the main focuses of the nonprofit Madison Center that Bennett plans to establish in Washington this fall, said Walters, who will become its executive director. It will also serve as a public-policy forum on education and other issues, he said.

--The woman in the Porsche insisted to the toll collector at the New Jersey entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel to New York City that, although she was broke, her husband would be good for the toll. “I’m Mrs. David Letterman and this is David Jr.,” she said, referring to her 3-year-old son next to her. “Don’t you think David Letterman is good for the toll?” Apparently he didn’t, for the woman, Margaret Ray, 36, of no certain address, was taken into custody. In addition to taking Letterman’s sports car for a spin and posing as his wife, Ray was accused of setting up housekeeping in Letterman’s New Canaan, Conn., home while he was away. On Wednesday she was granted accelerated rehabilitation on charges of burglary and auto theft and was placed on two years’ probation. Letterman, by the way, is single.

--The pampered residents of Palm Beach, Fla., will soon be able to enjoy home delivery of milk and other dairy products from squeaky clean--and honest--milkmen. All the milkmen hired by the Palm Beach Milk Co. will be required to undergo police background checks. “We’re giving people a comfort level, saying, ‘These guys are OK. You can allow them on your property and they won’t steal your silverware,’ ” said David Young, who founded the dairy with Baron Jacques Von Spiro. Von Spiro, incidentally, drives a cream-colored Rolls-Royce. And while most Americans drink milk from Holsteins, Palm Beach Milk will be offering its customers the richer, creamier product of Jersey cows--at a richer price.