Thanks again, Hiredhand. Trust is the result of presumed cedibility. Yet, when the talking heads are proven to have either abused the trust placed in them or, alternatively, proven to be not credible, the faithful, who desperately want to believe in, and believe, the talking head do not hesitate to disregard the breach because the falsity was something they wanted to believe and fervently wish were true. Therefore, the wish becomes father to the conclusion and the disconnected voice retains its authoritative place in their lives. The apparent breach of trust or untruthfulness of the representation thus simply doesn't matter.
The result is predictable. Knowing that, irrespective of the falsity of the representation made or the exposure of the breach of trust and without the fear of losing listeners, these talking heads can, and repeatedly do, make outlandish, false and reckless representations of fact (rather than opinion) they know to be untrue without the anxiety of potential audience loss.
The cake icing on this specie of communication fraud is their universal neat trick, the nice touch of pandering by shameless, and patently untrue, flattery by cooing that: ''...you're the world's smartest audience whom no one can fool...'' Of course, that's ''no one but me.'' Often the talking heads complain that professional athletes are paid too much for what they do; the irony is that it is they who rack up the really big bucks for telling folks what they want to hear while any confluence with truth is a nice, but superfluous, coincidence.
You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of back when Clinton was taking sexual gratuities from a certain intern of his, and how he said that his personal life had NOTHING to do with this professional life!
These things which we discuss are about indicators of character! One's character should be reasonably unchanging no matter what the situation! Of course, people make slip ups now and then. We're not perfect people, but the normal and "right" response is to give a heartfelt and humble appology, fix what we can, and get on with it.
But former CINCs pursue their employees for sexual gratification, and say that the action can rightfully be divided from what's "important". In the same manner, conservative talkshow hosts hawk everything from matresses to hearing aids and SWEAR it to be true, except with politics where they are EXPERTS and expect us to absorb every word as the ultimate truth. The same goes for scientists who expect me to believe that they have any sane or accurate method of determining what the state of the earth was 100 million years ago, and think that we can't see their overt agenda.
Like I was saying before....it's a big issue of conflict of interest in all three cases....the the perverted CINC, the talkshow host hawker, and the scientist.