J. Todd Foster Column: Sequins Or Rhinestones, Tie Has A New Home

For me, one of the keys to managing a newsroom is creating an environment where everyone is willing to tell you the truth at any time. A real boss wants to be stopped before he or she kills again.

So it really should not have surprised me recently when our youngest reporter, Claire Napier Galofaro, had the following exchange with me about the tie I was wearing. It was ivory with little white sequins – or as Claire says, “medium-sized rhinestones.”

Tomayto, tomahto.

To be fair, when I bought the tie on the Internet it was because it matched a shirt that had caught my eye, and I didn’t see the sequins/rhinestones.
Claire is a former costume designer and fashion illustrator in New York City and has a flair for clothing. So I sought out her opinion. I’ll be careful about doing that in the future.

“Claire, this tie evokes extremely mixed reviews from the women in this building. Some love it. Some hate it. What’s your honest opinion?”

Claire wrinkled up her nose and shook her head no.

“You look like a gay man headed to a jazz club.”

“Really, Claire? Because that’s not the look I necessarily was going for.”

“But if it were, Todd, you nailed it.”

I headed straight to my car to retrieve my backup tie. I never leave home without a relief tie – sort of the equivalent to a police officer’s backup revolver.
And I’ll never wear that rhinestone tie again. And it’s not because Chief Photographer David Crigger hummed Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” during a recent meeting about what to put on the front page. Fact is, I can’t wear the tie again. I gave it away to a Facebook friend/reader who responded to my recounting of the conversation with one of my “status updates.”

And this particular reader wore the tie to church that very Sunday and reported to me receiving several compliments.

Obviously Claire is not a member of this particular congregation.

And by the way, the shirt I wore to meet President Obama was not “hot pink,” as some colleagues and readers have informed me. It is coral. With a matching tie. Which makes the shirt and tie an ensemble. Although there’s nothing wrong with hot pink.

All of this has me thinking: Can you really differentiate straight men from gay men with the clothes they wear?

Why are some straight men effeminate and some gay men alpha males?

Should we care?

How did gay marriage ever become such a huge political issue in the wake of two wars and a near economic depression?

I’m not sure where I stand on gay marriage, but the friend who now owns my rhinestone tie gave me the best quote I’ve ever heard about the issue.
Singer and Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman once said, “I’m all for gay marriage … they should be as miserable as the rest of us!”

Which brings me back to the rhinestone tie and the conversation with Claire that I recounted on Facebook. One of my Facebook friends, a former co-worker who still writes for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, commented to me on Facebook: “Dude, you obviously need a mirror that tells the truth. I could tell from here that tie was wrong. ‘Did it come with a bowl of soup? Looks good on you though.’ ”

There are no comebacks to dialog from my beloved movie “Caddyshack.”

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at or (276) 645-2513.