Augusta National Slammed as "Secret Golf Club”

NewsMax ^ | 9/27/02 | Limbacher

[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.

[kcvl]

2002-07-18
In defense of Hootie Johnson and Augusta

Let me preface this article, no nevermind I am not prefacing it. I don't like golf. I don't like to play it. I don't like to watch it. I do like to watch Mickelson choke and Duval crumble, but if it isn't a major on Sunday, I don't even slow down the remote. BUT....

I do agree with Hootie Johnson's blasting of Martha Burk, chairman of the National Council of Women's Organizations, in response to her letter to allow women into Augusta National. "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." Good for Johnson. (I just can't bring myself to call anyone "Hootie" anymore).

Frankly I am all for equality, but equality just to prove a point is ludicrous. Martha Burk is simply trying to stir up trouble for trouble's sake and I, for one, am sick of it. It brings to mind the time I tried to join the League of Women Voters and got denied. Hell I thought there would
be more chicks there than in the general populace, but alas I was shunned. Do you see how ridiculous "equality" and "political correctness" are becoming? Let's just destroy everything. Every club. Every fraternal organization. Every Friday night poker game between buddies. Every Canasta game between women. "Going to get a facial with the girls, honey? Well great, Earl and I are coming too."

Why can't people understand that there has to be some separation? Is it that tough? You lose the "individuality" of the group or club when you let anyone in. If they start letting women in Augusta National, then the first thing I am going to do is send a letter to Hootie and get Reverend Jesse Jackson on my side to go down there and campaign for admission for the poor. Sure the dues cost twice as much as my yearly salary, but how dare you exclude me? I am a person. I belong in "Club People" like everyone else.

What I would love is if the backlash from this led to more men pulling a "Juwanna Man" and complaining about not being able to be in the WNBA or on the Women's Golf Tour. I guarantee there is a guy who works at Hardees who could play in the WNBA for 5 times his minimum wage job. And there is a club pro making $40,000 per year who would love the big paychecks/endorsement opportunities of the women's pro golf tour. People are not the same, no matter how much anyone would like to believe it. We are all different. And then we are drawn together by common characteristics. That is not racism or sexism, that is fact(ism). But every time you turn around, people want to steal our freedom to associate with the people we choose to. And in my book, that is every bit as bad as racism or sexism.

Stand-Up Sports

[lelio]

Bill Gates, allegedly yearned to get an invitation for years before he recently got one.
Did he get one? I thought he still had to play with us unwashed masses.

[kcvl]

Center for Advancement of Public Policy

Who we are

CAPP was founded by Martha Burk and Ralph Estes in 1991

Dr. Martha Burk
is president of the Center and publisher of the Washington Feminist Faxnet, is a political psychologist long active in policy analysis and research on women's equity. She has served as a consultant to national organizations and government agencies, and as a national board member for the National Organization for Women, the National Woman's Party, the National Committee on Pay Equity, and Wider Opportunities for Women.

Dr. Ralph Estes
is a fellow with the Center, a CPA, and accounting professor emeritus at the American University. He directs the Stakeholder Alliance, a project of the Center. A national authority on the role of corporations in society, he has published extensively; his books include Tyranny of the Bottom Line, Who Pays? Who Profits? The Truth About the American Tax System, and Corporate Social Accounting. He is a past president of Accountants for the Public Interest and of the Texas Civil Liberties Union.

[kcvl]

Dr. Martha Burk is a political psychologist and women's equity expert who is co-founder and President of the Center for Advancement of Public Policy, a research and policy analysis organization in Washington, D.C.

[kcvl]

Martha Burk, head of the Center for Advancement of Public Policy recently wrote a thoughtful article explaining the white male flight to the radical right, religious supremacists politics of the Republican party in the last election. This is the heart of it:

"The mostly male face of the Republican landslide is no surprise. The male/Republican female/Democratic trend has been evident since 1980, paralleling increasing Republican efforts to deprive women of abortion rights and consign them to second-class economic citizenship.

"Beside women and men sometimes have opposite priorities, and there was a smidgen of testosterone in this election. Many guys who don't actually own a gun still want to be able to buy one easily - just in case they're called on to clean up Dodge. Women tend to worry about getting raped at gunpoint. Basic difference.

"Does this mean we are head for a new politics of gender - a 'men's party' and a 'woman's party?' Hardly.

"The white male roar was in response to something much more basic: fear of the future. For the first time since World War II men are facing long-term systemic job insecurity. When people are fearful, theylook for scapegoats and saviors. Republicans produced scapegoats - welfare (blacks), affirmative action (women), and immigrants (all the rest) - while pointing to themselves as saviors. Desperate white guys went for it.

-- Martha Burk, president, Center for Advancement of Public Policy.

[Dr.Deth]

This broad needs a big tall glass of shut the f^&k up

Man, I love that pic :)

[Psycho_Bunny]

Ping for later.

[TomB]

Now you are nitpicking. I previously stated that women could play the course, but I have made it crystal clear that when I say that the membership don't want women at Augusta, I mean as members, in the locker rooms and such.

Groan!!!

Now I never said anything about prohibiting women from playing.

You made the statement that there was a RULE stating that women could not be members. I pointed out that there was no such rule. The club is by invitation only, and no women have made it through the mambership process.

[aREDSKIN]

This should be a very simple concept(s) for Ms. Burke to comprehend.

Privacy & Choice.

[unixfox]

Maybe the biggest reason to have an all male private club is to get away from stupid bitches like her.

[Orual]

Double groan and triple sigh.

My #66 to you was in reply to this from you:

In #62 you quoted this from me:

Written rule or no, the evidence that they don't want women in Augusta is clear and convincing.

You replied:

You seem to be getting away from your original statement:

You then quoted the "orginal statement" from me:

There is a rule that prohibits women as members, but they can play the course.

I said you were nitpicking because it appeared you were trying to find a contradiction between my first quoted statement above and my second one. Since I did not specifically say they don't want women as members in the first statement, you implied that it was a deviation from the statement that they could play the course. My reply had nothing to do with what you may or may not have said about women being prohibited from play.

It's been fun. We'll leave it up to Augusta now.

[PhilipFreneau]

Or, how about forming the NAAWP -- the National Association for the Advancement of White People.

[PhilipFreneau]

And exactly what does the word "Golf" have as its origin?

Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.

Actually, it was named Golf because all of the other four-letter words were taken.

Signed, a Golfer

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

We have a local club, the MAC (Missouri Athletic Club) which was sectioned off to males only. The witches whined... until they were permitted to use male only facilities. Men swam in a 5th floor pool without suits - naked. Fortunately the cigar room still exists, but it's this kind of BS that is very unfortunate.

[usadave]

"We'll ask them for on-the-record statements reconciling their corporate policies with their memberships in Augusta," Burk told the paper.

What does the one have to do with the other?

[watchin]

The United Caucasian College Fund? The National Orginization of Men? White Entertainment Television? The Congressional White Caucus?

[Lulogic]

Don't you find it interesting that many of the women's groups who are up in arms over Agusta's membership policy are themselves sexist by discriminating against men by not allowing male membership in their feminist organizations?

[american spirit]

Aww, Hooties' just a big blowfish....???