Easy enough, I think -- we are having our importances and priorities set for us by network executives and are accepting greatnesses independent of our own experience of people. A lemming race which is steered not by the individual measure of another person, but by the number of exposures that name can claim. Listen to any name-dropping contest -- what makes an impact is the degree of fame, earned or not, with which one can claim any link or association, not how wise one's own parents were, or how kind a cousin was, or how well-finished a piece of hand-made cabinetry.
Thanks to the media we have entirely confused the merit of virtue or magnitude of spirit with the ratings of fame, Nielsen ratings, and media-clicks.