>Obviously, no one believes for one minute that any 'normal' citizen will be granted access to most things. It's just an artefact of idealism you hear in law classes and political activism circles I suppose (and it's grey-ish-ly somewhat applicable at the lowest, local level).

What are these "most things" that you're talking about? At least in the US, FOIA requests are incredibly powerful and quite easy to make. You can absolutely get access to most non-classified documents, with well defined exceptions (ie, privacy of others).