The Masters golf tournament is beloved worldwide for the decorum and reverence with which it is presented by CBS each year. This year, the battle worth watching in Augusta, Ga., won't be Tiger Woods smoking the field; it will be a few hundred yards down the road for an interview with Martha Burk.
Burk is the chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations, a conglomeration of women's groups. She is at the point of an ugly fight on the National's male-only membership policy. Hootie Johnson, the National's chairman, refused to accede to Burk's demands. He openly (and stupidly) responded to Burk's letter that Augusta National incorporate females into the ranks publicly.
This did him more damage than good, despite his solid footing. What started with a letter soon escalated to a public fire fight that has been anything but civil.
Burk has conducted a tireless campaign aimed at inflicting the maximum amount of damage (financial and public) to the club. She has called on CBS, the PGA Tour, its players, the sponsors of the Masters and the town of Augusta to pull support from the tournament. Burk has gone so far as to launch a Web site fingering several entities such as Ford, Coca-Cola, IBM and Harvard University as being supportive of the policy because they have employees (pictures of whom are posted on the site) who are members.
Recently, she said that CBS shouldn't telecast the Masters because "showcasing a club that discriminates against women is an insult to the nearly quarter-million women in the U.S. armed forces," a position she wisely backed away from after taking some deserved criticism.
The irony here is that if Burk was really interested in women being discriminated against at golf clubs, there are better places to go. The only places women aren't allowed in the club are the men's locker room and men's grill. Several female golfers have played the course before this all happened, including the South Carolina women's golf team at the personal invitation of Johnson.
Several other clubs in this country, chief among them Pine Valley and Butler National, are much more exclusive. Women are not even allowed on those properties. If Burk was really interested in gender discrimination, why not start with the worst offenders first? The National isn't even close to the top of the list.
The conclusion that can be drawn from this is simple: This isn't really about getting a female member in the National; it's about creating an issue, getting attention and tacking a skin on the wall. It's not about the issue; it's about power and publicity. The scorched-earth tactics used thus far point toward this conclusion.
Burk freely admitted to writer Bob Cullen that when she took over the NCWO she was looking for an issue, stating that feminist organizations are often overlooked these days. Despite having made her point, she still continues on, attempting to pressure a private entity into her desires and to put her organization in the news.
This is doing the NCWO more harm than good. Had Burk simply stepped away after she made her point (she says she's won), her cause would be greatly enhanced.
Now, she's dragging it through the mud and turning off people by kicking a dead horse and grandstanding. Of course, if the National admits a female member immediately (as Burk desires), it would be correctly seen to be blatant tokenism on the club's part and the female would know it, denigrating her as a quota-filler. 2000 Master's champion Vijay Singh summed it up the best, saying, "I think there are really bigger and better issues out there concerning women than getting a membership at Augusta that she (Burk) should be focusing on."
Singh's comment illuminates the truth: The whole thing is a smoke screen to hide the real issue -- the right of a private entity to determine its own policies. The National's policy is as legal as those of female colleges refusing to enroll men. Nobody's debating that.
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