Icons have been having a hard time of it in America lately. There hasn't been so much toppling since the Berlin Wall came down. Just think of the scope: Catholic priests accused of pedophilic abuses and coverups; public accountants charged with complicity in all manner of corporate funny business; doctors scrambling to explain their enthusiasm for the now-discredited hormone replacement therapy they'd been recommending to menopausal women for decades.
Whether the new mass opprobrium is deserved or not, these longtime icons suddenly know what it feels like to be a politician, a CEO, a lawyer, a journalist, a general, a policeman or a car salesman, one of those whom Americans are practically born mistrusting. It's not just an American phenomenon, admittedly. The Catholic Church is under fire for the same abuses in Ireland, Poland, Australia and elsewhere. Accountants are under scrutiny around the globe. Hormone therapy has been a favorite of the international medical establishment, not just America's.
Yet if only in terms of scale, the United States is the fountainhead of the most sensational recent revelations, so its citizens can be forgiven for thinking they have a monopoly on disillusionment. Maybe that's why so many of them have voiced support for their country's (probably unconstitutional) motto, "In God we trust." They must feel as if there isn't anyone else left.