This whole mess is the result of trying to inject morality somewhere it does not belong, a team sport. How else to explain the very strong feelings towards one area of cheating, namely diving, while leaving the thousand other areas of cheating virtually unremarked? Every defender who tugs a shirt, or even gives a small push, is cheating as certainly as any diver. Can it be that diving = cheating + histrionics, while other forms of cheating are only cheating? If so, then it appears that what people are so concerned about is acting rather than cheating, or else they feel that acting somehow makes the cheating more culpable.
None of this makes any sense to me. Games are won by the fastest, strongest, most skillful, and, yes, the sneakiest, the ones best able to exploit the rules and how they are enforced. Wishing people would play "honestly" will never make them do so. It makes much more sense to take moral concerns out of it, accept that players will always try to cheat if it will help them win, and concentrate on making better rules and getting better officials to enforce them, so that cheating is not, as far as possible, successful.
At least two issues make the present debate about diving dysfunctional besides what I feel are excessive concerns about morality. The first is that referees don't call fouls and penalties when players don't go down. Players therefore have to choose between doing what is "right" and helping their team. It's farcical to give them this choice. Also, anyone knocked off stride at huigh speed will tend to avoid injuries more by tumbling rather than trying to stay on their feet. Awkward steps have cost a lot of players their careers. The fact that there's no agreed on signal or convention (that I know of) that says, "no foul, just rolling to avoid trouble," shows how far from a sensible solution we are.
Finally, I agree AVB would do well to bring the issue up often. I guess Bale should hit the deck less, but only if there's no risk of injury. It's also very clear, as has been said, that diving should be punished in retrospect only, after careful review of footage. Even then it's all too often unclear whether a dive took place. Asking the typical crap ref to judge what is and isn't a dive from one angle in real time is like having a guy with DT's perform a bris.