The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), in their infinite wisdom, has released the 2008 nominees for the Emmy Awards, a supposedly meaningful distinction that continues its embarrassing crawl to complete irrelevance.

For the fifth year, the ATAS has decided that The Wire, the greatest show in the history of television, is not one of the five best shows of the year. Rather than honoring the one program that had the vision to contextualize plagues of urban America such as de-industrialization, No Child Left Behind, the War on Drugs, and incompetent journalism, the good people (using this term loosely) at ATAS decided it more important to introduce an important new distinction: Best Reality TV Host.

Rant not quite over. I have to ask, how can a body of judges whose soul responsibility it is to recognize the most important productions in an entire art form decide that Ryan Seacrest, the talentless schmoe who talks between average performances of below-average songs, is more worthy of recognition than David Simon, the journalist turned TV producer who has said more about the problems of American cities over the last two decades than any novelist, journalist, commentator, or politician?

I guess they call it the Idiot Box for a reason.

In any case, at least John Adams and Mad Men got the credit they deserved, with 23 and 16 nominations, respectively. Must have been an accident.

If you're looking for good TV during the summer months, be sure to check out Simon's new project for HBO. Generation Kill is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Evan Wright, a writer for Rolling Stone who embedded with a platoon of Recon Marines in the first surge of forces into Iraq back in 2003. Wright calls the platoon "the tip of the spear of the invasion" in his book, which captures the psyche, values, and humanities of the Marines he rode with during those early days. His terse sentences read like rounds from a standard issue M-16. Knowing Simon (also responsible for Homicide: Life on the Street and The Corner), Wright's apparently picture-perfect representation of the War (I've never been to Iraq. How am I supposed to know if it's authentic?) will certainly come across on screen.

Mad Men begins its second season on July 27. Mark your calendars.