It's a good point, but also believe it fits within the framework I was (poorly) attempting to describe. If you don't believe those people deserve their wealth and power, then when we achieve wealth and power within our own spheres, we will have doubts about our status as well, and again, it is inconvenient to the human psyche to believe these things about oneself.
Also: The rich and famous make for lucarative targets given their appeal and profile. Blowing things out of proportion, bias in reporting, privacy-violating scrutiny, coordinated defamation isn't all that uncommon to have happened to them.
The first path are people that initially tilt towards morally good but eventually tilt towards morally bad as they accumulate more and more wealth and power. The people that the maxim "power corrupt" was made for.
Your path describe the naive people that would rather believe that the world is a meritocracy rather than a free for all with a thin veneer of meritocracy and will defend that facade until they are personally affected.
There is yet another path which is people that figure out the game and embrace it and say that anyone that doesn't play the game gets what's coming to them. I'd say that this guy is probably in this camp.
If they didn't deserve it, that would imply 1) the system is not fair and 2) we can't ever get what they have even if we become deserving.
Thus, we defend their credibility & merits so that we can go on believing in the meritocracy.