Let’s just say they missed the fairway — and any semblance of fair thinking. Upset that Georgia may actually be taking measures to secure its elections, (un)civil “rights” organization the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) is calling on the “PGA Tour, [and] Masters to pull” the upcoming Masters golf tournament “from Augusta National,” as Golfweek put it.
As you’ll soon see, this is a bit like asking Toyota and General Motors to pull General Motors from General Motors.
Golfweek reports on the story, writing that “NBJC executive director David J. Johns said the [election] law was created to restrict the voting rights of Black and disenfranchised voters in Georgia.” (Actually, it was created to restrict not voting rights, but the voting wrongs known as vote theft.)
“’Georgia’s new law restricting voting access is designed to turn back the clock on civil rights, and return Black and poor and already disenfranchised voters in Georgia to second class citizens,’ Johns said in a statement provided to Golfweek,” the site continued. “This is an unacceptable attack on our democracy and companies that operate in Georgia must speak out against this restrictive law.”
“The PGA Tour and Masters Tournament have both made commitments to help diversify golf and address racial inequities in this country — and we expect them to not only speak out against Georgia’s new racist voter suppression law — but to also take action,” he continued.
What Golfweak and other mainstream media sources don’t report is that the NBJC, founded in 2003, is mainly a sexual devolutionary (“LGBT”)-oriented group. It also doesn’t seem to know golf or history any better than it does virtue. But Mr. Johns should talk to one Martha Burk.
Burk, ex-chairman of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, is an activist scalp on Augusta National’s belt. Quite upset a couple of decades ago that the storied Georgia golf venue didn’t admit female members, she tried bullying the club in 2003. It didn’t go well — for her.
She also wanted the PGA (Professional Golfers Association) to pull the Masters. Burk didn’t know that the event isn’t run or controlled by the PGA, but by Augusta National itself. The Masters is Augusta National, and it alone is more prestigious than every single tournament run by the PGA combined.
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Burk next tried targeting the Masters’ corporate sponsors because, well, you know, money talks.
But not with Augusta.
The club’s response was to preemptively drop its sponsors and finance the Masters’ telecast all by itself in 2003 and ’04. So both those years viewers enjoyed the tournament broadcast without commercial interruptions. Thanks, Martha!
Burk didn’t know that Augusta had go-pound-sand money (yes, I cleaned that up) and, apparently, a Jeffersonian “millions for defense, not a penny for tribute” attitude. But this isn’t the only reason the club is uniquely situated to withstand cancel culture.
Rather, not only doesn’t Augusta need your business — it doesn’t want it. You can’t just join the club; you have to be invited. And according to late radio giant and avid golfer Rush Limbaugh, there’s one way to ensure you never will be: by asking to be.
The gist of Limbaugh’s point was that it didn’t matter if you were Jeff Bezos. Augusta doesn’t need a billionaire’s money; they don’t need a Daddy Warbucks name to lend their club prestige. Heck, it probably lends the place more prestige to turn a Jeff Bezos down.
So maybe now you know why, when the wokesters demanded last summer that Augusta change its major tournament’s name because when “you hear anyone say the Masters, you think of slave masters in the south” (LOL), it turned out to be a shank that ended up at the bottom of famed and feared Rae’s Creek.
So odds are that David Johns’ activist agitation will be mastered, too. He did, mind you, make yet another attempt at going long that will no doubt be a whiff: “urging professional golfers to boycott playing in Georgia until the [anti-vote-fraud] bill is repealed,” as Golfweak also informs.
Good luck with that. Not only are most PGA golfers Republican, but all their blood, sweat, training, and tears (okay, yeah, that’s a bit melodramatic) are geared toward winning major tournaments, with the Masters being perhaps the most highly coveted. So the NBJC’s request is a bit like asking the Cuomos to boycott self-admiration.
Almost a decade after the Burk bust, in 2012, Augusta National did finally invite ex-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and another woman to become members. And the club began hosting its first women’s tournament, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, in 2019. It always stated it would do these things on its own timetable.
(Now we just have to sexually integrate women’s sports…. Oh, yeah, our MUSS — Made-up Sexual Status — friends are taking care of that.)
This said, Burk-buster Hootie Johnson, the spunky former head of Augusta, passed away in 2017. So who knows? In this woke time, maybe the club will make some politically correct statements regarding Georgia’s election law. But you can bet on this: The Masters will be played on its appointed days, April 8 through 11 — and it will be called the Masters.
But, hey, Mr. Johns, good luck. If you’re more successful than I suspect, perhaps golf fans will once again get to watch a commercials-free Masters. And we’ll just call you Martha.
