Why the Scripps National Spelling Bee Is Always Perfect TV

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThe Scripps National Spelling Bee might be the only good thing left in the world.The Bee is perfect. It’s a place where hard workers, nerds, and misfits come out of their shells. (Or should I say C-H-R-Y-S-A-L-I-D-E-S, chrysalides?) A world in which immigrants become stars. A competition with one champion, but everyone is a winner. It’s work for work’s sake–studying for hours because it’s fun to learn things and to prove to yourself just how much your brain is capable of holding.With tech companies and corporate overlords increasingly trying to sell us the idea that expending any effort at all is bad, I find a bunch of kids who devote years of their lives to studying something relatively useless to be delightful.Read more at The Daily Beast.