THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 25, 1995 TAG: 9511230086
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
A VERY WISE old bird once told me that a very fine line separates people who show their independence and those who show their behinds.
Now we have the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission showing both. It is demanding that the Hooters restaurant chain hire men to work as ``Hooters Girls.''
This may strike some as a tempest in a tea or bra cup, take your pick, but it isn't.
Hooters is one of the nation's most successful franchise businesses. And Hooters Girls have been responsible for the chain's rapid growth. The waitresses wear short T-shirts, short shorts and cheerleader smiles, and they tend to jiggle when they walk.
A lot of lonely guys go into Hooters for a beer and a burger because they enjoy watching girls who look as if they are extras in a surfing movie.
Families go there, too. For instance, at the Hooters on Military Highway in Norfolk, about half the customers dine with their kids. There's even a children's menu.
Cheryl Whiting, director of training for Hooters, and a former Hooters Girl, got off a line that was worth a dozen legal briefs by the restaurants' legal staff.
All she said was: ``This is exactly the sort of thing that makes working people wonder about Washington.'' What they wonder, mainly, is whether space aliens are using invisible straws to suck the brains out of bureaucrats at the EEOC.
Is it any surprise that militias are marching in the woods to an anti-government drumbeat? Repeated decisions like this one by the EEOC have a water-dripping-on-rock effect upon the minds of the unstable.
The EEOC has important work to do. It is charged with the responsibility of ensuring fair hiring
practices that do not discriminate on the basis of gender, ethnicity, age or disability. But it is not empowered to crack down on businesses whose discriminatory hiring practices are essential to maintain their character.
Being female is essential to being a Playboy Bunny, a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader or a Radio City Music Hall Rockette. And it can be reasonably argued that a Chinese restaurant can legally discriminate against those non-Chinese who want jobs as waiters.
One EEOC office has even asked Lillie Rubin, a women's clothing store that sells apparel in the dressing room, to hire men as sales personnel! Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said: ``The women who shop at Lillie Rubin do not want male salespeople in the dressing room with them.''
There's a lot more to the EEOC demands upon Hooters. They include:
Providing 22 million to the EEOC for distribution to supposed male ``victims'' of the Hooters Girl hiring policy.
Establishing a scholarship fund to enhance job opportunities for men.
Providing sensitivity training to teach Hooters employees to be more sensitive to men's needs.
Appointing an EEOC-mandated administrator to supervise Hooters' compliance and report to the EEOC.
Forget the sensitivity training. Can you imagine a male who would seriously want to be a Hooters Girl? Or think he had the qualifications for the job?
There may be nut cases like that. But as long as the EEOC is moving money around, it might want to want to fund psychiatric counseling for them. Right after the shrinks have examined its own employees from top to bottom, of course.
And it can't happen too soon. The EEOC demand that men be hired as Hooters Girls is a rare and extreme form of lunacy that gives mere stupidity a good name. by CNB