Imitation is usually weakly defended as a form of flattery, but when the power to recreate falls into the wrong hands — and wrong they usually are, when famous enough to be instantly granted any pre-created work of genius to muddily fondle — the need for credentials beyond “because I can” becomes hopelessly evident.

I don’t care if Britney wants to do a little burnt-out Joan Jett or Christina thinks she’s some resurrected soul sister (her songs even have the crackle of old-time recording to prove it). No one takes such celebrity fodder seriously — let the pretty girls have their fun, right?

Recently, though, Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson, toppers of virtually every hot list in America (and the former probably every remote African village), have decided that being the most desirable pair of tits with any sort of talent in the business isn’t enough for their intellectually starved souls.

Jolie has requested, to instant approval of course, the role of Dagny Taggart in a 2008-slated Lion’s Gate adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” If you haven’t had the cultishly brilliant experience of reading said novel, feel free to move on to the bit about Johansson. If you have, surely you reel with the same utter disgust I feel in even beginning to consider Jolie’s pooked-out smirk imitating her interpretation of determined genius. Number one, Taggart is not supposed to be hot, gangly, busty or chronically annoying, all of which the socially ambitious snob is. Looks aside, Taggart stands for something Jolie does not — I’m not sure if Mrs. Adopt-Everything-That-Breathes realizes her railroad-running heroine was mostly against helping people. The image of Jolie snobbishly and ignorantly identifying with such a superior mind is enough to make me lose my lunch.

All right, since I’m starting to sound like a Rand-crazed victim of objective philosophy, I’ll move on — but not before mentioning that Brad Pitt wishes to play John Galt. Enough said.

So here Johansson saunters in, rubbing her raspy musical salts into literary wounds by selecting the songwriting closest to my heart as inspiration for her spring 2007 album Scarlett Sings Tom Waits. It’s certainly a safer choice than revealing her own attempts at writing, as she’d surely fall victim to the harshest stabs of hottie-hating from holed-up Internet critics, but dear God, why Tom? I suppose the predictably offbeat choice does line up well with all other aspects of her public image: mature girl-next-door, mussed sheets, coffee-and-cigarette newspaper browsing, Billie Holiday fine-wine schmoozing and other such introspective bullshit. But on “Summertime,” a track Johansson contributed to a celebrities-do-classics compilation, she lost a little of the smoky coal that sexes up her lines onscreen. This isn’t a good sign, considering she’s covering the meatiest scratch of a voice this side of the Grim Reaper.

There are times and places for such indulgences — say, the shower — and I only wish theirs weren’t so unavoidably public. From celebrities designed to provide entertainment, though, these acts of oblivious foolery do fulfill such duties.