This headline was the funniest thing to come out of George Clooney’s Venice wedding this week:

Internationally acclaimed barrister Amal Alamuddin marries an actor

This joke has been making the rounds since the famously eligible star announced his engagement; and its point, that Alamuddin has a distinguished law career, is well taken. There are clear 77-cents-on-the-dollar implications as well, along with the ever-nagging question of how, in our supposedly just and sane society, human-rights attorneys (or teachers, or social workers, or some other worker identified with the common good) are not paid more than athletes and entertainers.

It is no disparagement to Alamuddin (a fine, and FINE, Lebanese woman) or to the legal profession (show me a country without lawyers and I’ll show you a dictatorship) to point out that there is no real irony here. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lawyers. There are but a mutilated handful of bona fide movie stars, and Clooney is one of them. A just and sane society must also acknowledge that when a skill is both in high demand and exceedingly rare, the person with the skill can command a high price.

Simply put, it is harder to hold the interest of an audience — which is composed entirely of willing participants who are free to withdraw their attention at any moment — over a 90-minute stretch than it is to practice law — where you are generally working among people who have to put up with you whether they want to or not. Although market outcomes show this to be true, few are willing to admit it (and among the least willing to admit it are Hollywood types like Clooney, who are forever seeking out the approval of politicians and engaging in political causes in order to overcome their shame at plying such a low craft). It seems almost axiomatic: Of course a human-rights lawyer is a more exalted soul than an actor. She must be doing works of unmitigated goodness; it says “human rights” right there in the job title.

The funny thing is that Clooney attains mediocrity only in his efforts to be thought of as something more than a movie star. Judged by his advocacy on Sudan, etc., he has some decent accomplishments. Judged by his ability to carry a movie, he is in a class by himself. A few years ago Clooney starred in a spy picture called The American, which was hated by critics and considered a stone bore by everybody who saw it. Yet it still opened at No. 1 and made a tidy profit. In the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty, Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones deliver a master class in what movie stars are and why they are essentially different from the rest of us. From classics to stinkers to Batman & Robin, Clooney gets big bucks and big praise because star quality is as rare as a plate of raw kibbeh.

By contrast, I know only one person who really, really could not become a lawyer. That was Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor who failed the California bar exam four times despite having received a legal education at the unaccredited People’s College of Law. Even this did not prevent the erstwhile Tony Villar from rising high in politics. His status as mayor of Tinseltown frequently brought him into star-studded environments; and usually it was the stars who were impressed with him, rather than the other way around.

Alamuddin is clearly hitting at a high level in the legal profession, and the very best of wishes to these newlyweds. But there is in fact a legitimate reason you know more about the actor than about the internationally acclaimed barrister. (Are barristers the ones who wear wigs in court? Because Alamuddin’s hair alone would sway me if I were on a jury.)