[CH] A mean hot sauce....

Jim Weller (jweller@ssimicro.com)
Mon, 9 Dec 2002 14:42:08 -0700 

 This just off the wire:

Unflattering hot sauce label has skater Tonya Harding all fired up by JOSEPH
B. FRAZIER

A bottle of hot sauce, shown here in Portland, Ore., Thursday, is named
after disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding and sports an unflattering
caricature of her standing outside a dumpy trailer, cigarette in mouth, ice
skates in one hand and a hubcap in the other. (AP/Don Ryan)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Tonya Hot Sauce features an unflattering caricature of
disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding outside a dumpy trailer, cigarette in
mouth, ice skates in one hand and a hubcap in the other.

"Not for the weak-kneed," reads the label. "Guaranteed to assault your taste
buds. It's a lead-pipe cinch you'll love it." John Farmer and his PDX Hot
Lix company brought out the product a couple of years ago and says it's all
in fun. "I just read the papers and think up ideas for a product," the
airline employee said. "Tonya just keeps on giving."

Harding doesn't think it's very funny and neither does her lawyer. Made in
Oregon, stores pulled the product from the shelves after getting a legal
letter advising them not sell the sauce.

The five-ounce bottles are still available at a few stores for about $5 US.
Farmer says he'll supply them to any retailer who will have them until, or
unless, Harding sues.

"I'm in hot water, so to speak. Or I may be in hot water," Farmer said
Thursday. "I have an attorney who basically thinks the whole thing is
laughable. It's like editorial cartoons we see every day throughout the
country."

Farmer says he developed the recipe and has it made to order. Portland
cartoonist Joe Spooner did the label.

Harding's San Diego attorney William Markham said the spoof defames Harding
and unfairly conjures up memories of what he says are disturbing and
misunderstood events that foiled her dreams of an Olympic championship.

The letter threatens a lawsuit for misappropriating Harding's image.

"Tonya has been punished more than enough for what she did or didn't do,"
Markham said.

"(The label) portrays her as cigarette-smoking, bubble-gum-chewing trailer
trash and that's not who Tonya Harding is," he said. "She is a world-class
athlete who trained for years on end, and in a horrible episode lost all
that."

He said Harding wants to know how much of the sauce has been shipped and to
be paid in accordance with standard celebrity agreements.

"She went from Olympic contender to a publicly notorious person who, to pay
her bills, has to trade on her ignominity," he said. "That's bad enough.
Then to profiteer from it at her expense ... that's wrong."

Attempts to reach Harding were not successful.

The Willamette Week newspaper, which first carried the story, quotes
attorney Duane Bosworth, who practices law relating to intellectual
property, as saying Harding may have a point. He says she has the right to
stop people from using her image to make money.

"If they're trading on her celebrity, then she has a legitimate claim,"
Bosworth said.

Harding, a two-time U.S. figure-skating champion, was convicted in 1994 of
hindering prosecution in a plot to injure rival Nancy Kerrigan during the
U.S. Championships in Detroit. Harding also was banned for life by the U.S.
Figure Skating Association.

Last April she was arrested for drunken driving while on probation for
whacking her then-boyfriend with a hubcap. A condition of probation was that
she not drink.

Harding served eight days of a 10-day sentence. She was evicted last January
from a house she rented in Camas, Wash., for nonpayment of rent.

"I've sold maybe 2,000-2,500 bottles," Farmer said. "When she does something
really stupid, I sell extra cases of it."

He said he hasn't talked to Harding, but that Markham said in his letter
that Harding would go along with it all if she got "a reasonable share of
the revenues."

"She's not going to get much out of me," Farmer said. "If I have to give a
percentage to her I demand she give it to MADD (Mothers Against Drunk
Driving)."


http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2002/10/31/3067.html.