Augusta National says Masters will be without commercials - rather than invite women into club

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 8/30/02 | Glenn Sheeley

[GeneD]

Augusta National Golf Club is putting its money where its mouth is in its fight with a women's group pressuring the club to admit a female member.

Club chairman Hootie Johnson announced Friday that because corporate sponsors of the Masters' telecast are being pressured by the National Council of Women's Organizations, the 2003 tournament will be shown without sponsors or commercials.

At least golf fans will benefit from the fight. The 2003 telecast would have contained its normal four commerical minutes per hour. With 12 1/2 hours of live programming, that's 50 minutes of commericials that will not take golf fans away from the action.

"Augusta National is NCWO's true target," Johnson said in a statement. "It is therefore unfair to put the Masters media sponsors in the position of having to deal with this pressure. Accordingly, we have told our media sponsors that we will not request their participation for the 2003 Masters."

Rather than put its sponsors in a position where boycotts or their products or services would be threatened, Johnson said the Masters will absorb the advertising fees that would have been paid by IBM, Coca-Cola and Citigroup.

Johnson said, "We are sorry, but not surprised, to see those corporations drawn into this matter, but contunue to insist that our private club should not be 'managed' by an outside group. . . There may come a day when women will be invited to join our club, but that decision must be ours. We also believe that the Masters and the club are different, and that one should not affect the other."

[The Person]

What is it about the word "PRIVATE" that these FREAKS and WACKOS don't understand???

What is it about freedom of speech and consumer sovereignty that you don't understand?

[The Person]

Mixing in business is still private. If it were the government that was trying to change Augusta, I would be saying that the govt. has no right to interfere, no matter what business is done at the club.

But it's other nongovernmental individuals publicly criticizing another nongovernmental unit. There is nothing wrong with women's organizations criticizing Augusta.

If Augusta wants to have membership policies that piss some people off, let them.
But don't be surprised when some people are pissed off.

[AmishDude]

I think that a reasonable person can assume the existance of an exclusionary policy.

I have flipped a fair coin 10 times, each time it has turned up heads. What is the probability that, on the next flip, it turns up tails?

[AmishDude]

the laws of probability

What laws would those be? I'm not familiar with any "laws of probability". 10 heads in a row is a possible outcome. For any sequence of 10 flips it is an unlikely outcome but no more unlikely than the exact sequence HTHTHTHTHT or THTHTHTHTH or any other sequence.

Indulge me for a moment.

[Long Cut]

Okay, one thing at a time.

1. No, I cannot prove the sexual orientation of their members. Although, with famous feminists like Patricia Ireland being quite openly gay, and with them supporting EVERY gay and lesbian cause that comes along, one has cause to "assume", as you do with Augusta. I do like tweaking them, however, but then I never claimed to be a nice person.

2. In fact, I DO call those boycotting Disney "Nazis", for the same reasons. I also call them laughably ineffective.

3. Trying to beat the door down is not going to get them inside one whit quicker, and will engender bad blood anyways. (my original point)

4. I would assume that any prospective female member could meet all membership requirements. I do not know if being a pro is a requirement. My point was, the matter of an individual's membership is between that person and the club, and should not be the subject of some disinterested group's blackmail.

5. The motives of these groups have to do with money, always. That is a fact of life. They would not exist otherwise.

I guess our difference on this comes down to individuals versus groups. I believe that a qualified, sincere individual woman, on her own merits, has more of a chance of being an accepted member than some "token" forced down their throats by some collective group.

And while I do agree that they have the right to engage in their protesting, boycotting, sign-waving behavior, I still reserve the right to call it what it is: crass, rude, arrogant, mercenary, and ultimately immature.

Hey, John, it's been fun, and no hard feelings, at least on my side. I probably didn't change your mind and you didn't change mine, but at least we were both civil to each other. Have a good night.

LC

[The Person]

10 heads in a row wouldn't happen one in a thousand times. I think that if you did only one sequence of 10 flips and that happened, it would be reasonable to say that it is probably not a fair coin, no matter if it is US legal tender.

If you flipped a coin 100 times (there are probably over 100 members) and got heads every time, the probability of a fair coin doing this would be less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I don't think that even Augusta claims that gender is not a factor, rather that they are entitled to use a coin that is fixed to come up heads every time if they wish.

[AmishDude]

10 heads in a row wouldn't happen one in a thousand times.

True but barely. 1024. Truth is that Augusta is less exclusive than many Mahattan condo associations.

[AmishDude]

Do you know many Mahattan condo associations that have never admitted a woman and did not admit a black intil 1990?

I would suspect there are many that have never admitted a black to this day.

[Guillermo]

Again dummy, where did I say that they DIDN'T have freedom of speech?

Get back to me when you can answer this simple question, twit.

[The Person]

Again dummy, where did I say that they DIDN'T have freedom of speech?

Get back to me when you can answer this simple question, twit.

Where did I say that you said that they DIDN'T have freedom of speech?

Get back to me when you can answer this simple question.

By the way, people who can't express themselves without abuse are seldom taken too seriously.

[AmishDude]

No women?

Castro St., SF, CA.

[Viva Le Dissention]

To address your question about how the Masters will pull it off, it's important to know some background to the event.

To begin, the Masters has always been aired on CBS and it has always been done on a year-to-year contract. Last year, the rights to the Masters sold for approximately $3 million, while the US Open rights went for around $14 million. Yet the Masters is the highest rated golf event of the year--but since The Masters lets go of the event so cheaply, there are strings attached to every deal--that's the reason why the contract is always year-to-year; if Augusta doesn't like what CBS is doing, out the door they go. That's why Gary McCord and Jack Whitaker aren't calling the action at The Masters any longer. The voice has spoken.

That said, The Masters has a take it or leave it policy with CBS--no doubt CBS knows that The Masters will again have sponsorship, and they sure don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg--they take a revenue hit this year, and make it up again in years to come.

[dcwusmc]

Just sent this to them:

I am curious as to why you feel a PRIVATE CLUB should change its membership policies to suit you. Would you be as demanding of an all FEMALE private club or an all BLACK private club? Or any other combination that excluded some folks in its membership policies? If not, why not? If so, I applaud you for consistency and castigate you for butting into any PRIVATE organization's voluntarily-accepted rules of membership. It is not your business and you are dead WRONG for interjecting yourselves into their processes.

Very truly (but, thank God, not yours!)

David Wright
USMCRetired

[dcwusmc]

And your point is...??????

A private club or private business has the right to discriminate in any manner it chooses. Do you argue against "Blacks-only" clubs or schools, even those receiving tax dollars? How about Black businesses that do not welcome whites or others? Or is it "white-only" or "Male-only" that gets your panties in a wad? Sorry, they are within their rights to do so...

Having said that, it IS dumb to discriminate on racial grounds or, indeed, most other grounds. It's just that dumb does not equate to needing gooberment to rectify things as you imply.