RAW TRANSCRIPT:

FLETCHER: But this is true. I mean you have different people right now in suits for defamation and that’s the problem with America.  It’s that we have more lawyers in America than the rest of the world combined, and as a result we become a more litigious society than everything. 

And so people, you’re right, they don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings because if they hurt somebody’s feelings that might make them angry, that might lead them to a lawsuit. Now they got more controversy that they have to clear up. If I go back to that 15 Most Annoying Things About American Culture, what do you think number three is on the list?

SLOPER: No clue.

FLETCHER: Not wanting to hurt little dear self-esteem. You see this in how we raise our kids. They do away with an F in school because F means failure and that might hurt little Timmy’s feelings if he got an F. We don’t look at from that standpoint. Maybe Timmy doesn’t like to fail. Maybe that, kick his hand in the face will motivate Timmy to get his ass and gear to study to get better grades so that next time he doesn’t see that F and he isn’t disappointed.

But no, if we hurt little Timmy’s self-esteem, if we don’t give him a trophy along with all the other teams that lost what kind of example we’ll be setting? This is what you’re seeing in the real estate industry, is that – they are not publishing names because a public shaming would just be too harsh. Tell that to the family. Tell that to the client who lost $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 to the real estate agent who cut every corner, lied to him, made misleading promises, bait and switch advertising.

SLOPER: What are the chances of somebody actually got public shamed have actually repeating that same offense? Like, you’re more likely to learn from being publicly shamed. I mean, how many top of millionaires and billionaires have been publicly shamed and actually came out the other side okay.  It’s not the end of the world necessarily but for some reason we’ve been conditioned to think that if you’re publicly shamed once that that’s the end of your life.

FLETCHER: Well, think about the difference.  So you got Donald Sterling and we’ll look at the NBA and we look at Pop Culture. You got Donald Sterling who made a racist comment, didn’t say anything. He got caught making the racist comment and fire stormed. He was forced to sell his team. His entire reputation has been destroyed and everybody is bagging on him.

If you were Donald Sterling fan, which I get the impression not a lot of people were, but because he hit it and got caught, it’s ten times worse. Now you got the Atlanta Hawks owner coming out freely admitting owning up too that he sent an email concerned about the revenue and the fan base and why they weren’t getting seasoned ticket holders, mostly because they had a black population and these were tend to be lower income individuals than white people.

Now, he came out, he exposed that email. He outdid himself and people like, “Congratulations!  You did the right thing.” The blowback on him isn’t going to be nearly as bad. If you do something that’s unethical, if you do something that’s immoral, if you just own up to it, people will give you a second chance.  You learned from it.  But no, we should hide it. Public shaming is just too torturous.

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