Hooters to Bob Filner: Respect women

Hooters restaurants all around San Diego have banned disgraced mayor Bob Filner from their premises.

Apparently Filner’s alleged tendency to invite his female subordinates to work without their panties was too much for the restaurant chain that invites (requires?) its waitresses to flaunt other assets. But evidently, the chain wants to judge women not by the length of their booty shorts, but by the content of their character.

A sign posted in four different Hooters locations around the city announces that Filner will not be served in those establishments. “We believe women should be treated with respect,” the sign reads.

Hooters is hardly a natural bearer of the feminist mantle. Their uniforms consist of a tight tank top and a pair of electric orange booty shorts, and their logo is an owl with a lewd stare. But San Diego Hooters locations consider the move a stand for the “beautiful, talented” women in their franchise, according to Melissa Fry, director of marketing for HootWinc, the West Coast Hooters franchise.

Amazingly, the sign was created by Glenn Beck and publicized on his Monday night show. Fry noted that posting the signs is “not a political move.”

Filner, 70, is fighting to keep his job amid allegations by 14 women that he sexually harassed them. Shrugging off calls that he step down, Filner checked himself in for two weeks of “intensive therapy,” which he completed last week and returned to office.

Talia Lavin Talia Lavin is an intern at JTA. A recent Harvard graduate and aspiring novelist, she recently returned from a Fulbright grant in Ukraine, where she studied early 20th-century Hebrew literature.