Does Anybody Really Care?

I've been sick the past two days, not ill enough to require medical attention, not well enough to be in the company of other human beings.  So I'm cranky.  Crankier than normal, I mean.  Plus I had a lot of time on my hands, which I spent watching television.  Or falling asleep on the couch while pretending to watch television.  Whatever.
   I tried to watch the Golden Globes last night.  I started during the 'red carpet' portion, where celebrities arrive to have their pictures taken and to gab innocuously with people who purport to be news presenters.  Didn't make it more than five minutes.  Same thing with the regular show, I just couldn't gut it out.  I have to say, either I'm getting smarter or these programs are getting stupider.
    Does anybody care anything at all about the Golden Globes?
   I'm talking about the general public.  I'm sure it makes a great deal of difference to a nominee if he or she wins or not - I assume - but does anyone watching give a hairy rat's ass?  Because I found I did not.  It was like I was tuning into a channel in a foreign language, where the program could either be an infomercial, a game show, or a shopping channel.  I just was not invested enough in any of it to find it in the least bit interesting.
   Which raises the question:  are the various media 'news' outlets giving us something we asked for, or are they telling us what we asked for?
    I think it's the second option.  I think that people in charge of networks aren't listening to demand and filling it, they're taking pre-existing content and generating 'demand' for it.
    While I do find this objectionable - I'll tell you what I'd like, thank you very much - this practice is also basic to marketing.  People don't know what they want until you tell them.  Where this veers into shady territory is when news outlets cover these shows as if the winners were as important as a do-nothing Congress or 60,000 dead civilians in Syria.  I'm sorry, Ben Affleck, you're a great director, but your win does not deserve more precious air time than the Debt Ceiling discussions.
   We're being manipulated, and while a network like Fox is more crass and obvious about its pandering, all of them do it.  There's not enough time in the day to find all the stories that pertain to you, so you rely on the news programs to tell you what you need to know.  Honestly, I believe you can be a perfectly productive citizen without knowing the first thing about the Golden Globes.  Or the Oscars.  Or the Emmys.  Or the Grammys.  Those things are the modern version of 'bread and circus games,' gimmes to the great Roman unwashed to keep them from rioting.  Think about the hours you spent watching the Golden Globes last night and tell me you couldn't think of one more productive thing you could have been doing with that time.
   Yeah, I didn't think so.