Male chauvinists scattered like jackals in a lion’s path. : Allred and the Tamale

Gloria Allred is at it again.

America’s spunkiest feminist marched on Mr. Tamale’s Gourmet Mexicatessen in Encino last week, trailed by an obliging parade of reporters and photographers, to announce that she is suing Mr. Tamale on behalf of a disabled woman and her dog.

Poor Mr. Tamale.

Many of you, I know, are saying, “Oh, my God, not her again,” and you are not alone. When one of our woman reporters heard that Allred was once more summoning the media to a street corner press conference, she sighed and said, “What if Gloria Allred filed a suit and nobody came?”

A good deal of grumbling is heard, in fact, just about every time the Lady in Red sends word to all of the newspapers and wire services and radio and television stations within reach that she is calling them like Moses to a mountaintop to hear her pronouncements. But I’m not one of the grumblers.

So Gloria wears bright red dresses and bright red lipstick and bright red fingernail polish to announce her presence as (get it?) All-red? So she knows how to stir the interest of assignment editors? So mainline feminists are quick to announce that she is trivializing their movement?

So what?

Male attorneys like Melvin Belli, who once hopped like a kangaroo from a courtroom, and the late Jake Ehrlich, who had 10,000 different pairs of cuff links and loved being called “Master,” have for years employed show-biz tactics to win an audience.

Belli shrugs off critics like a priest shaking a hooker and glories in the damnation that glitz heaps upon his golden head.

Gloria happens to love publicity too, and has a couple of dozen scrapbooks in her office to prove she knows how to get it.

Take the Mr. Tamale thing which, by the way, is his real name. It used to be Louis Michael Moran but he changed it to Louis Michael Tamale because, I presume, Mr. Tamale’s Gourmet Mexicatessen makes a lot more sense than Mr. Moran’s Gourmet Mexicatessen.

Gloria is suing him on behalf of a disabled woman, Sandy Oseas, because Mr. Tamale allegedly would not allow Oseas to bring her “service dog” into his restaurant.

Any other attorney would have filed the suit and maybe mentioned it to a reporter he drinks with at the Second Street Saloon and that would have been that. Not Gloria.

First she sent a bulletin to City News Service announcing that there would be a press conference on Ventura Boulevard about the filing of an Unprecedented-Lawsuit-On-Behalf-Of.

She always teases just enough so that nobody is quite sure whether Allred is simply going to announce the lawsuit or show up with four naked clowns, a singing duck and a company of gay midget gymnasts.

In this case it was the woman and her dog, which is a departure from her usual assortment of romantic lesbians, nursing mothers, male strippers and female jail inmates chained to their beds and fed from bowls on the floor.

CNS alerted its media customers via wire just about the time the customers themselves were receiving press releases from Gloria announcing “Handicap Discrimination. Disabled Woman Sues Restaurant.”

It is like dangling red meat before a failed vegetarian. Editors simply can’t resist it.

So they sent their people to the press conference and there was Ms. Glitz all in red with Oseas and her service dog Landmark, a friendly and adorable poodle who does everything but translate Leviticus from Latin.

Gloria had the dog pull Oseas’ wheelchair around and then help Oseas up some stairs and then pick a pen up off the ground to prove how valuable he was and why he should have been allowed to enter Mr. Tamale’s restaurant.

I mean, you just know a dog that can push elevator buttons and turn on light switches and maybe take simple dictation is not going to urinate on anyone’s floor, right?

I’m surprised a dog that smart would even consent to enter something called Mr. Tamale’s Mexicatessen.

Anyhow, once Landmark performed, Gloria lead the parade across a parking lot to the restaurant while male chauvinists scattered like jackals in a lion’s path.

Mr. Tamale, wisely, was not there, so after a few parting shots, Gloria called the press conference to an end and was on her way with Oseas and the Talking Dog.

It was a bit of a circus, I suppose, but it also called attention to a legitimate question, whether someone who depends on a trained animal ought to be able to bring that animal into a restaurant open to the public.

I guess they should, although I wouldn’t want a dog at the next table myself, even if he did happen to be an accomplished essayist who didn’t get hung up on transitions and knew the difference between a particle and a participle, dangle-wise.

I feel a little sorry for Mr. Tamale who is going to need more than a good attorney to fight Gloria Allred. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Flying Wallendas would certainly help, but they wouldn’t be enough.

She’d just retaliate with the singing duck and the naked clowns.