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."

[dcwusmc]

You say you don't like how libs behave... you've taken a page right out of their playbook... you are wrong on the issue even if you have the law on your side.

[jenny65]

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.

Speaking as a woman, I give a big thumbs up to the Augusta National Golf Club for telling the NCWO to go to hell. And I can't STAND golf. I have to wonder though: Just how big of a threat was this women's organization to begin with? I'd never even heard of them until they started hounding Tiger Woods.

[dcwusmc]

Not officially,, of course. there never were official laws allowing blacks and others to be lynched. It was all quite a matter of the law looking the other way, of course. Unless you were Chinese living in California in the 1800s... then the actual law on the books said you could not file criminal charges against a white man for any crime he had committed against you or one which you were the sole witness... He could not be prosecuted unless another white man saw the same crime and was willing to testify to it. That was the law of California. Was it good? Was it RIGHT? Pay attention here, there's gonna be a quiz afterwards.

[dcwusmc]

There were as I said no OFFICIAL lynch laws. There WERE laws (such as the anti-miscegenation laws which prohibited any interracial romancing) which were used as a semi-official excuse to lynch black men. The courts would routinely turn loose the perps because they were enforcing the laws (in true vigilante style, to hear it said)... so there was official connivance which is what I thought would be understood by other thinking people. So it happened. Did that make it right? Does it make it right now? Is it justification for using the force of law to make otherwise private entities do YOUR bidding because someone, sometime used the law to commit OTHER evils?

[GRRRRR]

And the beat goes on...Patricia "Don't call me "PAT"...on Hannity and Commie tonight..."women lose out on the old boys' network because they can't get into Augusta...they lose business....Waaaaaahhhh

Way to go Hootie!!!