Tonight, on the Tony Awards, an actor named Bill Irwin won the Best Actor award for his performance in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Irwin is best known as a so-called New Vaudevillian — a post-modern clown, is the best way of putting it. (Parents may know him as one of the two people who play “Mr Noodle” during the “Elmo’s World” segments on “Sesame Street.”) This isn’t very interesting, except for the fact that Irwin was one of the first people to win a MacArthur “genius grant” two decades ago.

Which means that he may be the only Genius Grant winner ever to amount to anything after getting his $250,000 prize.