I agree I could have chosen a less inflammatory analogy. However, I chose this because it is a stark illustration of what can happen when we secret away the dirty laundry, in order to save face publicly.

I'm a firm believer in using the fear of public shaming to get people to behave reasonably. I have never seen a more effective social mechanism to get people to behave decently. There is even honor among thieves, as they say, and thieves, like every other human being, doesn't want to be publicly shamed and humiliated.

Max has made it a policy on Mudcat to allow guests to be publicly humiliated and shamed with impunity. He has another policy for members, which is to use the private messages to police members who behave badly. You won't ever see members being personally admonished by their behavior, ever.

As I said, I could have used a less inflammatory analogy, but it likely wouldn't have hit the nail near as accurately. In this case, I chose accuracy. I'm sorry that saddens you, but even your sadness wouldn't cause me to change the analogy or apologize for the timely use of it in this instance.