The New York Times is in such a lather about Augusta National Golf Club’s ban on women members, it has briefly interrupted news coverage of "The Sopranos" to write about it.
The alleged outrage over Augusta is not a naturally occurring phenomenon that is simply being reported on by the media. It’s a synthetic scandal cooked up in the New York Times’ PC laboratory. One of the best female golfers in the world, Nancy Lopez of the World Golf Hall of Fame, has said she has no problem with Augusta’s policy. But scribblers at the Times have flogged Augusta so relentlessly, it almost seems as if normal people are up in arms over a golf club’s "no girls" policy.
First of all, its ridiculous to compare the plight of women to the plight of blacks. Only the bizarre anti-sexual psychology of liberals could fail to grasp the insanity of treating gender like race. Women do not form a separate society that must be integrated into a nation of men. Men and women are ineluctably bound to one another. They are also utterly different. Phyllis Schlafly’s point that no one wants to end the tradition of separate bathrooms for men and women is so fundamentally true that there is nothing else to be said. (Except in France, where the practice is common.)
But it is really more than the public should have to bear to watch the last bulwark of legal discrimination in America fume about the membership policies of a private club. The media won’t hire half of America: Republicans.
Stunningly, there is not a single person in any half-important job in the mainstream media who might have voted for Ronald Reagan. That can’t be easy. There aren’t that many people in the country who didn’t vote for Reagan. In 1984, he won the largest electoral landslide in history.
Fittingly, so far the only member to resign from Augusta to protest the exclusion of women is Thomas Wyman, the former chairman of CBS News-specializing in intolerance for half a century. Wyman was never disturbed by the blatant discrimination at CBS. He proudly presided over a club where membership ran the gamut from Walter Cronkite to Dan Rather. Indeed, CBS was so discriminatory and hateful toward Republicans there’s even a book about it: Bias by former CBS star-reporter Bernard Goldberg.
While privileged enforcers of the ideological Jim Crow system like Wyman received million-dollar bonuses, talented young journalists were excluded from Wyman’s elite club. Aspiring newsmen who happened to be Republicans had to find work elsewhere or get used to fourth-floor walk-ups and peanut butter for dinner. Dreams were dashed and careers ended. Hearing Wyman complain about discrimination is like listening to Bob Guccione complain about the bawdy language on prime-time TV.
If he hadn’t resigned in a snit, Wyman probably could have taught Augusta a few tricks of the trade from the most discriminatory industry in the nation. Frankly, Augusta has been going about this in entirely the wrong way.
Point One: Simply deny that Augusta excludes women. Try something like: "Augusta is not exclusive. It’s humanitarian." This is how CBS’ Walter Cronkite explained the employment of only liberals in the mainstream media: It’s not "liberal, it’s humanitarian."
Or how about: "We don’t exclude women. I have always believed that if you get women out of the way, then decent, reasonable golfers can play." Don Hewitt, executive producer of CBS’ "60 Minutes" said: "I’m not liberal. . . . I have always believed that if you get the NRA out of the way, decent, reasonable Americans would figure out a way to respect the 2nd Amendment."
Point Two: Claim that both men and women think they are excluded from Augusta. Cite ludicrous "studies" proving it. As Lesley Stahl said of the liberal media: "Everybody complains about us, right wing, left wing, Democrats, Republicans. They all pound on us. They all think we’re unfair to them." She said "this big huge study" had concluded that "the mainline media is sucked in by the right-wing conspiratorialists."
Point Three: Do not merely exclude women. Denounce them. Call women’s golfing abilities "amateurish and inept"-as CBS’ Bryant Gumbel called Bush’s Middle East policy. Say women golfers are "an oxymoron"-as Gumbel said of "Texas justice."
Point Four: While openly excluding women, make a big ruckus about any discrimination based on minor, inconsequential differences among men. Commission studies to determine if tall men are getting as much tee time as short men. The glossy magazines won’t allow a single Republican to write for them. But they are consumed with grief that not enough models of color have appeared on their covers.
Point Five: Patronizingly instruct women to stop whining and go start their own golf course. Then if they do, viciously ridicule it. This is what media elites told conservatives for years. We finally got Fox News, and now they savagely attack it.
This is how an entire industry serving the public interest explains its own continuous and ongoing discrimination against half the country. Poor little Augusta just wants to exclude girls from a golf club.
