Ledger

Issue date: 4/17/03 Section: Sports

The only thing missing from the start of The Masters was a clown and some loud music. Despite the beautifully groomed greens that lay beyond the gates of the Augusta National Golf Club awaiting the tournament to come, Martha Burke’s circus was desperately attempting to draw some attention outside.

But wait - there was a clown. A man calling himself Georgina Z. Bush was dressed in a black garter belt with the American flag as his shawl. He had on clown makeup and was denouncing the war.

Burk, the chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, spent the previous nine months promising immense pressure on the men-only club in Georgia including protests if necessary.

Burk showed up to protest, but there was only mediocre entertainment in sight.

“This issue was never an issue,” said Todd Manzi of Tampa, Fla., “It’s all about Martha Burk’s self-promotion.”

The pressure that Burk was promising came in the form of a big inflatable pig and less than 50 protesters beside her.

A Ku Klux Klansman was also in attendance, showing off pictures of his poodles while he told people that Augusta had the right to exclude women. To round off her circus show, a protester in a tuxedo carried a sign saying “formal protest,” and a group of boys from Georgia brought a sign that read “People Against Ridiculous Protests.”

You all know my view about having a women playing in The Masters. If she can compete, then good luck to her. But the protests at Augusta are not about The Masters. The protests are about the club.

Burk wants the club opened up for women to become members.

“The club needs to open its doors for women, but the larger goal, and it has been for months, has always been to make sex discrimination as unacceptable in the halls of power as race discrimination is,” said Burk on Sunday.

“I don’t think that we’re hurt by [the low turnout] at all,” said Burk about her protest. “We already know the women of America support us.”

Sorry Martha, this is one American woman who does not.

Let the men have their own club. Let them go and smoke cigars and reminisce about the time that they hit a hole-in-one. Let them get out of their homes, away from their families and just have some guy time.

The lot that Burk reserved for her demonstration was for 900 protesters; however, according to Jim Litke of ESPN, state troopers leaned against patrol cars with nothing to do. They were sent there to separate the protestors — the ones that never showed up.

Despite the extremely low turnout for her protest, Burk is calling it a success and she has already planned her next phase of the fight.

A corporate accountability campaign will begin in a few weeks where Burk will have meetings with the corporations that support Augusta National. She hopes to meet individually with the companies to urge them to take a stand against what she is calling “sex discrimination.”

Call it what you will, but the Augusta National Golf Club is not going down without a fight. I think that the men will prevail in this case, as they should, and women will not be admitted as members.

The bottom line is that this shouldn’t be as big of a deal as Burk is making it out to be. We should all just leave them alone. It’s only a game, after all.

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