I remember when Walter Cronkite still had a job. He was not only the "most trusted" man in the news biz, I believe he may have been the "last trusted" man in our pop consciousness.
I haven't really thought this all through, but I do think we've become completely unmoored from any kind of reality. We have hypnotized ourselves with our pop culture and everything is faux, pseudo, etc. Kind of like in that movie "The Matrix."
I mean we know there's a hardcore reality. This ground, this tree, this dead guy. They are real enough. But we've kind of willed them to be something else. And our world of fantasy, the virtual reality of the internet and TV and movies and the dream world that we all want to live in dominates our consciousness and permeates our beings.
Cronkite wasn't really a celebrity, (or I guess he was), but a news man who happened to be multiplied on millions of screens. It seemed like he only told us the truth. But of course that was his show. He was so un-show-like, but really his trusted-ness was just another pop culture trope.
Now everyone is a celebrity. The live ones the dead ones. And since we all know that celebrity-hood is a kind of show, everyone is in show biz. Some of us have grand shows and some kind of meager. Still it's all show. And because we can't totally brainwash ourselves, we know it's all show, we are cynical about everything and everyone. It's all just for show baby! It's all about the money, the bling, the celebrity. Trust, honesty, truth, they are just props used to fool us. And if we fool ourselves really good we're sort of happy. But still, deep down, we know...
And the show isn't really real. But we don't care. We want the un-real show, not the real reality. There's a certain cynicism that goes with that, I mean we eat it breathe it, swim in it, but that's okay. It's the Apotheosis of Pop. And it sort of pops. And we know it's basically false, a lie, but that just more pop trope stuff. Throw it in the hopper. It all comes out in the wash!