Posted on 09/27/2002 11:55:43 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Augusta National Golf Club is a private club. It has 300 members, all of the male persuasion. It is a golf club which owns one of the lushest golf courses in America.
As a private club, it has the right to make its own rules. One of the rules states that Augusta National’s membership is limited to men. That’s the way it has always been and because it is, it irks one Martha Burk, who is chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations.
It also appears to irk USA Today which reports that the Burk woman has fired off letters to six members of the club demanding that they explain how they dare to belong to a men only organization.
"Friday, USA Today reports, "Burk's newest letter will hit the desks of six club members: Rep. Amo [that’s Amory, boys] Houghton (R-N.Y.); Lloyd Ward, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee; former U.S. senator turned Coca-Cola board member Sam Nunn; Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill; Motorola CEO Christopher Galvin; and JP Morgan Chase CEO William Harrison.
"We'll ask them for on-the-record statements reconciling their corporate policies with their memberships in Augusta," Burk told the paper.
In a lengthy story in today’s issue, Michael McCarthy and Eric Brady present this golf club as some kind of secret, conspiratorial organization akin to Yale’s infamous Skull and Bones coven.
Augusta National, you see includes among its 300 members some of the nation’s most important men - CEOs of major companies, top political figures and the scions of America’s financial aristocracy. Among the more illustrious members not mentioned by McCarthy and Brady, was one Dwight D. Eisenhower who occasionally lived in a cottage on the grounds. One has a picture of Ike reading this hit piece and hitting the ceiling as he was wont to do when encountering this kind of politically correct advocacy disguised as journalism.
The membership roster, loaded as it is with gentlemen of wealth and accomplishment automatically places the golf club under a cloud of suspicion in the eyes of USA Today which seems to find capitalist conspirators under every bed. What on earth do these people talk about when they get together in private, without a woman in sight. What kind of skullduggery do they plot?
Now it’s bad enough, it seems, that the members are rich, but many, USA Today tells us ominously, are old.
"USA TODAY” the reporters tell us, "has obtained a copy of the long-secret membership rolls for the club that hosts The Masters, one of golf's four major championships. The names on that list tell the tale of an old boys club, emphasis on old: The average age is 72. More than a third are retired. And they come mainly from the country's old-line industries: banking and finance, oil and gas, manufacturing and distributing.”
Obviously a very sinister group.
"The list is interesting as much for who is on it as for who isn't,” the paper tells us, noting that while Warren Buffett, Jack Welch and Arnold Palmer are there, " you won't find the likes of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump or any publicity-loving dot-com billionaires.”
Bill Clinton? In a gentleman’s club?
The club, we are led to believe is not only undemocratic, it is also exclusive. You just can’t walk up to front door and apply for membership - you have to be invited! Bill Gates, allegedly yearned to get an invitation for years before he recently got one.
USA Today actually refers to Augusta National as "golf's secret society,” and goes on to list the membership as composed of "Statesmen and politicians. Several of Augusta's members have spent half their lives in the public arena. But when it comes to their membership, they say little.
"Among those who could not be reached for comment: former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders. Nunn said in a statement: ‘As a member, I make my views known through the club's normal procedures, not in the public arena.’ "
Football’s legendary coach Lou Holtz, recently invited to join Augusta National, told the Atlanta Journal & Constitution: "I have played there many, many times over the years as a guest. My wife has played there and she loves it. We have stayed all night there at the course. She is as excited as I am."
Asked about the question of its absence of women members, Holtz said: "My wife has played there and so did a thousand other women last year. I don't know where the no-women policy is. . . . I don't want to hear 'no women,' because my wife has played there."
"This is a private club," member Ben S. Gilmer of Atlanta, a former president of AT&T told the Journal. "What they say among themselves is a private matter. Other people are trying to inject themselves into a private matter. . . . He [Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson] speaks for the club, so if he speaks for the club on this issue, he speaks for me on it."
In 1934, the first golfer to win the Masters was Horton Smith, who just a happened to be married to Barbara Bourne, daughter of Singer Sewing Machine Company heir Alfred Severn Bourne who helped finance the complex.
When his daughter married Smith one of her aunts said "Imagine spending all that money to educate Barbara, bringing her up properly to bring distinction to the name of Bourne, then she marries a man named Smith.”
And that, Miss Burk, should tell you what you’re up against.
Some of these broads probably actually have penises. ....and definitely balls.
If they did let them in, first they would want 'bathroom parity'. Once they had that, then they would separate exercise facilties.
I'm sure Hootie would give them some special exercise equipment, like brooms, mops, vacuum cleaners and ironing boards.
This ERA era joke, brought to you from the Joke Time Machine, (JTM is a registered trademark of a bunch of old smart asses with too much time on their hands)
Nah, I don't want to join anyway.
For all intents and purposes, the rule is: no women members. I have no problem with that, and I don't think they should be bullied by the PC crowd into changing that "rule".
I think I'll start a "National Council of Men's Organizations" just to highlight her hypocrisy.
Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden
"...you won't find the likes of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump or any publicity-loving dot-com billionaires.”
You may want to reconsider. Any club with the sense to keep out Clinton and Trump has much to recommend it.
I was invited to play there and consider it one of the highlights of my professional life.
And you are correct a member must 'nominate you' there is no application process and telling someone you want to join is a sure way to get off the list.
Bill Gates was nominated by Warren Buffett and Lou Holtz I assume was nominated by Hootie since he played football at the University of South Carolina.
"There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership but that timetable will be ours and not at the point of a bayonet.
Note, he did not say anything about changing the rules, merely being invited.
Sandra Day O'Connor is a golfer and would make a fine member, but they must be nominated to join the club and no one can force them to do it.
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