I've been kind of a one-trick pony for a while now, only commenting on environmental issues, despite the fact that this is not, specifically, an environmental blog, but rather, as I see it, a clearinghouse for information and a sounding board. So I thought I'd bring up the Emmy Awards. The nominees just got released and, once again, The Wire did not receive a nomination for Outstanding Drama Series. Moreover, it got only one nomination, Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series. The title of the AP analysis pretty much sums it up, "'The Wire' gets 1 final Emmy snub":

"It's like them never giving a Nobel Prize to Tolstoy," said Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and a correspondent for Slate.com. "It doesn't make Tolstoy look bad, it makes the Nobel Prize look bad."

The series that did receive the nomination for Outstanding Drama are Boston Legal, Damages, Dexter, House, Lost, Mad Men. I'd like to come up with a good explanation for why the show got snubbed. A lot of people are discussing the race issue, which may very well be the case. My father has a friend in television, and he expressed his disdain for The Wire as follows:

Me: My favorite show on TV is The Wire.
Him: Oh, you like that? I heard the creator, David Simon, is a real Nazi about research.

So there you have it. Television does not like a well-researched show. But it does apparently like shows (24, Dexter) about people who do bad to do good. Maybe there's a fantasy among TV people that all the rotten things that they do and rotten shows they produce are actually for the greater good of society.
For the record, the television guy who said that makes disgustingly high-tech kids' shows that are little more than high-octane exercise videos.