Are celebrity endorsements worthless?
Bob Greene
CNN Contributor
When Butler plays Duke for the national championship of college basketball Monday night, you can count on two things with absolute certainty:
1. The television ratings for CBS will fall somewhere within the range of really impressive to enormous.
2. You will see commercials featuring famous professional athletes, doing their best to persuade you to purchase the products they are endorsing.
Which brings us to a seldom-questioned oddity about contemporary life:
What do you think would happen if there was a highly publicized court case, and the defense lawyer asked the jury to acquit the defendant because of the emotional testimony of an eyewitness - and the prosecutor announced that the witness had been paid a huge fee by the defense?
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That would be a huge gamble by the defense.
If the jury found out an eyewitness was paid to give testimony,it would call into question the validity of the testimony itself.
I don't see how that would help the defense at all.