Hot Sex

Every so often, an "issue" comes along that captivates the attention of Signal readers, unleashing a flurry of letters to the editor, e-mails, faxes and phone calls responding to something that stirs readers' passions.

More than a decade ago, we published a photo of a striking young lady. Her picture had been snapped by an alert Signal photographer at a biker rally. She had a come-hither look about her that said, to quote columnist John Boston, "You can have me - if you can catch me."

Her name was Carmen. And she had the "it" factor going for her. She knew how to wear a snug pair of Daisy Dukes. Plus, she liked to ride motorcycles. I've never been a biker dude, but I've always liked fine cars and fast women. Or is it fast cars and...?

Anyway. Carmen's appearance in The Signal's Escape section featured no frontal nudity whatsoever, but her photo, coupled with Boston's breathy description of the fetching biker chick, prompted a maelstrom of reader response, both pro-Carmen and anti-Carmen. Some folks agreed that Carmen's devilish grin was a pleasant addition to our pages. Others believed we should have been sandpapered, lightly salted and fed to cannibals for printing something so provocative and frivolous.

Carmen didn't live here, but she became something of an overnight local celebrity, and if memory serves, she even came back to the SCV for a limousine tour in which she posed for another photo - on the city manager's desk.

Every once in a while, Boston and I wonder what ever became of Carmen. But, to follow up on her after all these years, I think, might dampen the magic a little.

Carmen wasn't just a biker gal. She was a "moment" - one of those snapshots of time in the history of this paper and this community, where we became caught up in something rather frivolous, but the debate was passionate, nonetheless.

There have been other moments and stories like Carmen's, not necessarily involving sex, but involving news coverage or commentaries that diverted readers' attention from serious matters like foreign policy or the City Council's latest debate on the proper way to tie one's shoes.

Gary Horton, who isn't a Signal employee but writes a column that appears weekly on our opinion page, wrote a piece just under two weeks ago in which he griped and whined about the new dress code at one of his favorite restaurants, the Oaks Grill at the TPC Valencia golf course.

It seems Horton and another one of our nonstaff columnists, Tim Myers, had been asked to leave the TPC because their attire was not in compliance with the restaurant's dress code.

But the dress code calls for collared shirts. Horton and Myers apparently were wearing T-shirts of the noncollared variety, and were asked either to switch to collared shirts or to leave. Horton took offense and wrote about it, even putting forth the claim that he was more than "upscale" enough for the TPC because he drove there in his 2005 Corvette.

Regardless, Horton used the relatively open forum we provide on the opinion page to express his opinion that the TPC double-bogeyed when he and Myers were kicked out of the restaurant.

We try to impose as few restrictions as possible on writers, even in letters to the editor. We won't publish letters that exceed certain boundaries of taste. We won't publish anything that we know to be libelous (false and defamatory), and generally we steer clear of "customer service complaint" types of letters and columns, which can be a "he said, she said" minefield. After all, if you send me a letter saying the waiter spit in your soup, how do I know if he really did?

Those things aside, we try to operate the opinion pages in the spirit of being a First Amendment forum. A wide variety of points of view are presented, and many of the opinions expressed on these pages are actually contrary to those of The Signal.

Usually, when we think about presenting diverse views on the opinion pages, we think of it in the context of the hot political issues of the day, or viewpoints on breaking news stories.

Not so this past week, when our greatest reader response has been not about "hard" news, but over the question of whether Horton was out of line in his reaction to the way the TPC enforced its dress code.

When Horton visited, they offered him and his lunch partner "loaner" shirts, so the guys could be in compliance with the country club atmosphere the TPC hopes to preserve, which is the club's prerogative.

But, apparently, a loaner shirt wasn't good enough - to the extent that Horton wrote a column lambasting the TPC for having a snooty attitude. And, in a subsequent column (as if one wasn't enough), Horton wrote that the TPC could have made the situation better by offering to give him and Myers free TPC golf shirts to keep.

I agree it would have been a great example of something I once heard a motivational speaker call "outrageous customer service" - attention that is so over the top that the customer can't possibly refuse to come back.

Horton's suggestion of free golf shirts would have fit that bill. Wearing his free $60 shirt, he would have been hard-pressed to gripe about the dress code. It would've been a great example of outrageous customer service.

I'm not in the habit of writing columns about other columnists. But in this case, I think some people are lumping Horton and The Signal together - and I want the record to reflect that, just because we printed Horton's rant over the TPC dress code, it doesn't mean we agree with him.

Meanwhile, we're hearing from all sorts of readers about the "issue" manufactured by Horton's column. This week's leading topic in letters to the editor was not the school Facilities Foundation or the war in Iraq, but the dress code debate.

At first, I thought the folks at TPC would be mad. They may be, and I wouldn't blame them one bit. But on some level, this has worked out great for them, publicity-wise: They're trying to promote an upscale image of a golf club that is considering going private - the dress code debate reinforces that notion - and they've got Signal readers coming to their defense, taking Horton to task for his position. Those letters, like Horton's column, are getting ink on our opinion pages.

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