Augusta National

[Dr T Non-Fan]

Does anyone here think a private club should bend their membership qualifications at the whim of public opinion?

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/story?id=1403695

I enjoyed the veiled threat by the women's organization. It should try holding out instead of pressuring advertisers.

[Aaron Brachowitz]

It sounds like Hootie made this a story by dignifying it with a reply, so to speak. (It's fun to include the word Hootie in a post, try it).

A new local golf club got some publicity (good or bad depending on your perspective) for declaring it would be men only, thank you. My view is that if 200-300 women golfers want to pool their resources and form a girls-only golf club, go right ahead.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

He responded publicly, so that his version was first to hit the paper, not theirs.

Besides, it's not about the golf. Heck, hardly any professional golfers (I think Arnie and Jack are the only ones) are members there. That's not considered a noble profession, from what I've read some of the founders say. Arnie and Jack have apparently bettered themselves to be worthy of membership.

[Ducky]

My view is that if 200-300 women golfers want to pool their resources and form a girls-only golf club, go right ahead.

Bingo.

[Pseudolus]

Right. Or a bingo club. That would be fine, too.

(And, IMNSHO, about as exciting. But that's just me.)

[Dr T Non-Fan]

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/story?id=1446945

I don't think this story will quit until the bulldog gets her way. We need to level the field by giving her a heart attack. She can't even let Tiger off. Anyone against her opinion is for discrimination. She's an embarrassment to women who can think logically, IMO.

1. (I couldn't find the other thread I asked this in, but) What woman would "qualify" to join this club? I don't know how the small percentage of American men qualify, but it appears to be lots of money, a few good friends, and some financial incentive for the current membership.
2. Besides the money and the few friends thing, why can't I join? Apparently Bill Gates has been trying to join.
3. The standard men's room discriminates against women more than Augusta does against women, since there isn't any rules against women joining, according to Hootie.

[Aaron Brachowitz]

She really doesn't handle defeat gracefully. Let's review:

1) She pressured Augusta, and struck out.
2) She pressured the sponsors, and Augusta pulled the rug out from under her.
3) She pressured CBS, and they said they're staying with the telecast, even at a loss.
4) She pressured the PGA to not recognize Masters winnings in the cumulative standings (getting pretty trivial now) since the PGA has a non-discrimination policy. They refused.
5) She has pressured club members who are CEOs of public companies, suggesting that they are violating their own company's policies. They dismissed her without comment, for the most part.

"It ends when there's a woman admitted to Augusta National and not before,'' she said. Why is it her business whether a private club admits women?

[fallout]

Augusta can do what it wants, until it takes some Government money.

Wouldn't a course like Augusta have a long waiting list of qualified potential members?
Wouldn't inserting a woman at the top of the list be sexual discrimination?

Isn't stopping sexual discrimination exactly waht these groups are about?

[Dr T Non-Fan]

There's a ST:TNG episode in which some formidable female from Starfleet is investigating the Enterprise for treasonous behavior, leading to a court-martial of Picard. She is eventually brought down by her own hysteria. Perhaps that will be the fate of this pathetic woman as well.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

Re: Lloyd Ward, CEO of American Express and USOC Executive Committee member.

Anita DeFrantz, a member of the executive committee and the International Olympic Committee, said Ward's job is not at stake.

"I will not be a part of running the first African-American CEO out of town on the basis of diversity," DeFrantz said.

[NoName]

Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online quotes from a piece in the New Yorker by Peter Boyer, about Martha Burk:


At one point, I asked her to help me to understand the benefit to society that would result from a woman joining Augusta National. She responded with what has been, throughout her campaign, her case-closing line: "You wouldn't ask me what was the benefit to society if we were talking about excluding people on race."

No, but this wasn¹t race. I wondered, "Can there exist such a thing as a benign exclusion of one gender or the other in a private social setting?"

Her answer surprised me. "I myself have what I call the 'girls' dinner,'" she said. "Just some of the women in the women's movement, and we get together for dinner. Women in Congress do it, too."

The difference, she explained, has to do with the conditioned behavior of men and women. "Here's the difference. And it's interesting that you should ask this, and it¹s just now come to me, pretty clearly. It is because, when men get together, denigrating women is often a part of the social interaction. When women get together, denigrating men is rarely done. It's just not even on the radar screen. Even among the so-called strident feminists of the women's movement. We don't have anything to hide in that way, and men seem to."


Well, there you go. It's not that the men are getting together - it's that I, Martha Burk, am obsessed with the idea that they must be saying bad things about women, because after all, they're men. Women-only meetings are OK because of course women would never say anything bad about men. Because women are better. And by the way I've been fighting this in public for months and I have just now come up with this compelling explanation.

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_02_09_corner-archive.asp#003550

[Dr T Non-Fan]

She ought to stay with the dismissives, and lay off attempting the logic.

[NoName]

Jesse Jackson weighs in (via tvh.blogspot.com)

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/28/cf.00.html

First he just makes stuff up:


CARLSON: Mr. Jackson, thanks for joining us. I want to read you a quote of yours. This is something you said yesterday on an Atlanta radio station AM 680 about the Masters Tournament. "The name does not really come from being the master of golf," you said. "You know it really comes from slave masters."

Now that's untrue. Why did you say that?

REV. JESSE JACKSON, RAINBOW/PUSH COALITION: Well, that is its original meaning. It was. It's on a plantation. It was about only the masters could play, the while male masters.

It was slave masters. And for a long time, they held on to that policy. The secret society of only white men and finally blacks. But today we protested because we think that...


And later he makes a lame effort to distinguish Augusta from Smith College:


CARLSON: My question to you is, Smith College, which has been around for over a hundred years, a very prestigious college, excludes men on the basis of their sex. It's a much more prominent institution, much more important for the life of this country than some country club in Georgia. Why aren't you chaining yourself to the gates out front until they let men in?

JACKSON: I think that women are -- a woman's college or a sorority will be in quite a different category, or a man's college or fraternity, than one would say than an institution so public. This public institution called Augusta Country Club uses slave officers from South Carolina and from Georgia. It is a sponsor, in fact, supported by CBS.

It's too public to be private. And why don't we just make a commitment. Let's end racial, gender, religious bigotry once and for all. Let's just end it. [...]

CARLSON: Well, wait a second, Mr. Jackson. You are saying, you're comparing sex discrimination to racial discrimination. And yet -- and, in other words, you are taking what you claim as a standup principle. But I asked you a moment ago what you thought of Smith College excluding men. I'll ask you now what you think of women's organizations excluding men.

And I bet you don't care. Do you?

JACKSON: Well, it's according to the level. In other words, I think sororities can be all female or fraternities can be all male. But to compare an all-female sorority with an all-male fraternity with a country club so public (UNINTELLIGIBLE), where its membership largely are men sponsored by public corporations, to lock women out of the Masters Golf Tournament seems to me to be unfair.

CARLSON: It takes no federal money, unlike Smith College. I mean Augusta isn't a public club. It's a private club.

(CROSSTALK)

JACKSON: Well, just like the Brooklyn Dodgers are a privately owned baseball team, but the games used -- it was subsidized far beyond this ownership. The August Country Club is private, but its public subsidy is far beyond its membership. And I think the real issue, when you really add up what is happening now, kind of anti- civil rights, anti-affirmative action, anti-Title IX, KKK, Trent Lott, lock women out, we cannot go backwards, we must go forward.


UNINTELLIGIBLE is right.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

He ought to keep with the untruths, dismissives, and guilts-by-associations, and lay off the logic.

Very interesting untruth: "Augusta National was founded by slave masters, and that's where the term 'Masters' comes from."

I'll check snopes for this.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

Augusta National Country Club: public institution or private institution?

I think that the club would rather halt the tournament forever, rather than be considered a public institution.

[moj]

Augusta National Country Club: public institution or private institution?

I think that the club would rather halt the tournament forever, rather than be considered a public institution.

No doubt! Jesse is very stupid man. (Now I am going to be called racist)

[Dr T Non-Fan]

(Now I am going to be called racist)

That's only because people will generalize your statement, but that would be the simplistic thought process of less intelligent folk.

[Pseudolus]

Having heard "diversity" lectures than I care to recall, I will give what I think would be a representative response from an academic liberal point of view:

Like white people, men have "traditionally" been part of the culture of power, excercising inordinate control over the lives of those outside the culture of power (people of color, women, gays, etc.). Because of this historical asymmetry, it would be ahistorical and unjust to respond in totally symmetrical ways to these differing institutions. Women do have a real need to create their own "safe spaces" away from men in which to speak their mind and achieve their full potential. Men, particularly white men, are already in a privileged position in our culture. The only purpose of a male-only club is to reinforce this existing unjust situation. Therefore, we should support all-woman institutions like Smith college, while at the same time opposing all-male institutions like Augusta National. Similarly, we should support all-person-of-color or all-gay institutions while opposing all-white or all-straight ones.

(Note: I'm not agreeing with any of this, but since the Rev. isn't holding up his side of the argument, somebody should.)

[Dr T Non-Fan]

And it continues...

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/story?id=1529733

Shame on her, indeed.

[Shrek]

And it continues...

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/story?id=1529733

Shame on her, indeed.

She deserves the same level of attention as I give Two-pack/IMHO posts. None.