Our parents told us we were special.
But, we all knew they were just doing their jobs.
These days, “awards proliferation” is picking up where mom and dad left off … confirming that we’re all special.
In “Everyone’s a Winner,” sociologist Joel Best concentrates primarily on America’s self- congratulatory culture.
Everywhere the author turns his gaze—from bumper stickers that boast about “my kid the honor-roll student” to boosterish “employee of the month” awards — Mr. Best sees a proliferation of prizes that seems to arise from a desperate desire to exclude fewer and fewer people from the winner’s podium.
Literary prizes are now given for every kind of category, including 12 different kinds of detective fiction recognized by the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar awards. The nominees for the Best Picture Oscar (nominations themselves are awards) have recently doubled from five to 10, and the number of Grammy awards given out last Sunday night came to more than 100. Valedictorians were once unique; now some high schools have dozens.
The tendency to create social subsets in which we may be recognized for “excellence,” in Mr. Best’s view, is also evident in the explosion of rankings and “best of” lists in recent decades—including everything from colleges and plastic surgeons to car-repair shops and hamburgers.
Such prizes and rankings … are often self-created and thus abundant.
One question that Mr. Best does not address is whether the many winners among us actually believe our own hype.
Martin Chuzzlewit noted long ago that many of us think we are among “the most remarkable people in America.”
WSJ, Why We’re All Above Average, Feb.16, 2011.
The Homa Files 
February 18, 2011 at 10:34 am |
Fitting that “Everyone’s a Winner” was written by a Mr. Best?