“The rule that newer shows need a break should be bent in one case: Conan O’Brien’s ill-fated stint as the host of “The Tonight Show” wasn’t the best of the year, by a long shot. His nomination for outstanding variety, music or comedy series is a little like President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize — political, premature and meant mostly as an affront to his predecessor.”

—New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley, properly tweaking the Emmys for nominating “The Conan O’Brien Show” for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality, which was spotty at best.

When awards programs do this, they destroy their credibility and integrity, and signal that what the public suspects is true is true in fact: awards, whether they be Oscars, Emmys, Pulitzer prizes or Nobel prizes, are the messy results of political preferences and personal biases, not objective and fair judgment and analysis.

On the other hand, perhaps it is good that they are not even trying to pretend otherwise any more.