White collar high-income professionals living vicariously through worthless public figures. To acknowledge those people are useless is existentially threatening.

EDIT: I'd also say a lot of these people probably work bullshit jobs that create little to no real value for society, they know it deep down, and thus achieve a sense of self-worth in a hollow capitalist society by closely identifying with these people. They don't want to admit that all the debt and hard work it took to get those prestigious credentials and pay grades were fucking worthless in the end.