It seems to be that there are pretty much "roles" that we expect public persona to fill. RMS is supposed to be a freedom nut, Linus is supposed to be a rude ran

It seems to be that there are pretty much "roles" that we expect public persona to fill. RMS is supposed to be a freedom nut, Linus is supposed to be a rude ranting geek, Palin is supposed to be a complete nut that never gets anything right and so on. Somehow it seems that in the flow of news and information we turn all the individuals into characters from a sitcom. Not allowing information through when they are acting "out of character" or even appearing to be quite human.