Are "Tragedies" Better Than "Comedies?"

Later this week the nominations for this year's Academy Awards will be announced. One of the issues that often arises is that comedies (and sometime musicals) are overlooked in nominations. The other day my daughter and co-movie-enthusiast raised that question. "Why are all the big movies sad?" Or for that matter even tragic. So, to stop for a moment here are the nominees for the past 4 years (Winner in italics):

***2004
Million Dollar Baby (Tragic)
The Aviator (Tragic)
Finding Neverland
Ray
Sideways (Tragic, but a sense of hope)

***2005
Crash (Tragic)
Brokeback Mountain (Tragic)
Capote (??)
Good Night, and Good Luck
Munich (Tragic)

***2006
The Departed (Tragic)
Babel (Tragic)
Letters from Iwo Jima (Tragic)
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

***2007
No Country for Old Men (Tragic)
Atonement (Tragic)
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood(Tragic)

It would appear that on average over the past four years that 60% could be considered tragic stories, although there might be a sense of hope in at least one ending. One of these was a biopic (The Aviator). Of the 8 non-tragic stories, five of them were biopics and three were fictional. All the winners were tragic and some profoundly so.

Even taking a look at the movies I have seen that are nominated:

Milk (Inspirational but tragedy)
Benjamin Button (Inspirational but at least sad if not tragic)
Slumdog Millionaire (Drama, may or may not be tragic)

And the two I haven't seen yet:
The Reader (Holocaust related. Not sure of its direction)
Frost/Nixon (Drama, but a tragedy in the classic sense)

So I thought a little more about this issue. What is it about the tragic story or the true tragedy that brings such honor to its production? Is there something inherently "better" about such drama? Or do we just assume that "drama" has to have a tragic ending? The "lived-happily-ever-after" story seems to be too unreal and not the way the world seems to work? It's easy to keep on asking these questions.

And I Googled some quotes on tragedy:

Tragedy- The oldest form of drama, raising issues about the nature of human existence, ethics or human relationships.
--Link

The tragic vision impels the man of action to fight against his destiny, kick against the pricks, and state his case before God or his fellows. It impels the artist, in his fictions, toward what Jaspers calls "boundary-situations." man at the limits of his sovereignty--Job on the ash-heap, Prometheus on the crag, Oedipus in his moment of self-discovery, Lear on the heath, Ahab on his lonely quarter-deck. Here, with all the protective covering stripped off, the hero faces as if no man had ever faced it before the existential question--Job's question, "What is man?" or Lear's "Is man no more than this?" The writing of a tragedy is the artist's way of taking action, of defying destiny, and this is why in the great tragedies there is a sense of the artist's own involvement, an immediacy not so true of the forms, like satire and comedy, where the artist's position seems more detached. (Sewall "The Vision of Tragedy," Corrigan 49-50).
--Link

Yes, I know that sounds HEAVY, but think about it. It may answer why comedies are not taken as "seriously" as dramas and especially tragic dramas.