Humiliation-avoidance: the engine that drives public policy?

"I was publicly humiliated," Abdul said in her closing statement. "That is why with an open heart and a selfless agenda, I implore you to pass this bill."

That was the closing statement in entertainer Paula Abdul's testimony before the California Senate Business and Professions Committee on the subject of unsanitary nail salons.
Seems she got the mother of all nail infections and that, along with her celebrity, gave her standing to testify on this subject with which probably a lot of people have had experience.
What I found remarkable is that in her final appeal, she used humiliation of all things as the reason to regulate nail salons. Not health or hygiene, either her own or that of future nail salon customers. And then she called that a selfless agenda. I couldn't imagine a more selfish agenda.
How these things usually play out is: someone in the spotlight says something boneheaded and because words do mean something, someone else points out to them what they just said. Then we get protestations of "I was taken out of context" because the speaker cannot seem to grasp that words do mean things.
Anyhow, most of us care more about the pain of a wicked nail infection than the pain of public humiliation, which is why we have so little sympathy for a terrorist with panties on his head.