Assignment 5: For the Love and Hate of Television, Tobias Cox

     It should not come as a surprise to anyone that the Emmy's receive quite a bit more attention that the winning of a Nobel prize. One's importance in life seldom has much to do with his or her intelligence. You can be the smartest person on the planet and have no one ever pay attention to you. Your importance in life is determined almost entirely by who you know, how loud you are, and how much you are willing to bend for other people. So all of these smart physics researchers getting a Nobel prize? There isn't really any reason for the common person to listen to them. The common person will not understand what they are researching. The common people don't care about some sort of physics concept that will most likely not directly affect their life. So, what is important on television follows the same rules that make a person important in his or her life. But here is the extra thing. Television is used for entertainment purposes. People watch TV to escape from their day to day life. So, surface level things like the Emmy's are perfect for people to watch! They don't matter at all, so it makes for good entertainment. No one wants to deal with big philosophy or physical questions in their free time. So to sum up, to be important on television, you must do a few things. You must be boisterous, you must be "in" with other important folks, you must care about what people think of you, AND, most importantly, you must be very very surface level. You must be so mindbogglingly simple that you provide for a good distraction from real important life. Only after you become completely unimportant will you be important in entertainment.