Iron Man, the super-hero comic book adaptation starring Robert Downey Jr., debuted at #1 at the box office this past weekend and has hauled in over $104 million since Thursday, CNN reports. And with it, Mr. Downey Jr. himself makes a sort of comeback, providing evidence once again for America’s long-standing (and lucrative) love affair with stars who come clean.

There’s certainly a pattern here and it looks something like this: star begins to rise; star gets popular; star is tempted by the sour fruits of fame; star indulges; star metaphorically collapses in a train wreck of vivid and ridiculous proportions; star struggles for X number of years; star comes clean and admits all and apologizes; star is reborn; fans cheer even louder than before. It happened for the Clintons. It happened for Martha Stewart. And now it’s happening for Robert Downy Jr. (It hasn’t happened yet for Britney Spears, or Tom Cruise for that matter, but I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time.)

Why? Because we love people who bite the dust hard, but then get up and go at it again, successfully. It’s a mesmerizing story to watch unfold, for one, and for two, we wish we could do that, get back on the horse sans dignity and reestablish ourselves, getting back into the good graces of everyone we’ve known and whom we’ve let down, time and time again.

As is pretty well known, Downey Jr. recently spent two years in prison, was a consistent drug addict before that, and has been long hailed as one of the film industry’s best examples of being bad. In a New York Times article, David Carr recently mused about Downey Jr.’s character, and about Downey Jr. himself, writing, “After a life of squandered promise spreading mayhem everywhere, our hero has a near-death experience and finds within himself the angel of his better nature. Ring any bells?”

Actually, it does, and I don’t just mean the self-referential nature implicit to this particular character/actor relationship in Iron Man. This archetypal fall/rebirth happens extremely frequently, and may even signal a sort of backwards, unintended perk of being completely honest and transparent in full view of the public.

It was George Clooney who put it best, I think, in an interview he gave Rolling Stone in one of their enormous 40th anniversary issues last year. “Let’s say I run for president—I’m not running for president, but let’s say I do. I’d run on the platform of ‘Yeah, I did it.’ You have to go, ‘Yeah, I did it.’ Did I sleep with her? Yeah, I did it. Did I do the drugs? Yup, did it, done. Now let’s talk about the issues. All you have to do is not be afraid of taking it on the chin early, ahead of everybody. Come out with everything that could possibly come out and go, ‘Now, you’re going to hear about all this shit, because I didn’t live my life from the time I was four to be president. I actually lived my life.’ People can’t live their lives to be president.” In fact, Clooney’s hypothetical sort of straightforwardness would seem to be fairly marketable; candid revelations about stars’/politicians’ humanity often make them more likeable, and therefore sellable.

Other examples of this phenomenon abound. Barbara Walters’ memoir Audition, in which she admits having had an affair with a senator in the 1970s, hit shelves of late and amassed quite a bit of buzz (and sales). On his second day of office (he replaced Spitzer, who himself revealed, that he had involvement with a prostitute), the new governor of New York, David Paterson, revealed that he and his wife both had extra-marital affairs. Even JetBlue had a similar moment last year in which they issued a frank and open letter to their customers for having left passengers on the tarmac trapped inside one of their planes for hours on end. Within days, JetBlue’s CEO David Neeleman put it bluntly: “We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry. Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue’s seven year history.” How refreshing, I remember thinking. Someone messed up big time and is actually admitting it. (Even fictional representations of the “Yeah, I Did It” campaign exist, like Michael Scott, regional manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton in The Office, saying of a paper recall he’s forced to oversee, “How is the press going to find out if we don’t tell them?” Touché, Michael.)

Clooney goes on, after being asked whether anyone in the current political foray could run on the “Yeah, I Did It” platform. “Barack Obama,” Clooney says, “gave a great answer when they asked, ‘Did you ever smoke grass?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ They said, ‘Did you inhale?’ and he goes, ‘I thought that was the point.’ It’s a great line. Anybody who’s running who’s gone through the Sixties and didn’t smoke a joint, I don’t want you for president. You haven’t lived at all. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

And therein lies the crux of all this. Ups and downs are everywhere and are a natural part of any experience, public or private. The entire world, from the stock market to ocean tides, runs its course in cycles. As such, it’s interesting to note that Robert H. Frank, a business analyst, put it this way: “The full-disclosure principle holds that rivals should find it advantageous to disclose all possible information about themselves that others might consider relevant, even when the information is highly unflattering.” Robert Downey Jr. is only the most recent to have benefited, it seems, from this fact, even if his own biggest rival has been himself.

Total train wrecks attract attention, and honesty sells, it turns out, because “highly unflattering” information may actually not even be all that unflattering if it makes these people we adore (against our better judgment at times) more like us. We like people that are like us, even when they’re really not like us at all.

Now someone just needs to tell to Barry Bonds, and maybe Roger Clemens.

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