"Order is back," said Hootie.
The chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club wasn't predicting the resurgence of Tiger Woods at his Masters Tournament when he uttered those words last week. No, Hootie Johnson was referring to the return of corporate sponsors to a golf classic played at a club that discriminates against women.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday April 17, 2005 Home Edition Opinion Part M Page 5 Editorial Pages Desk 1 inches; 42 words Type of Material: Correction
Master's sponsors -- In an April 13 column by Andres Martinez, Lee Elder was incorrectly said to have been admitted to Augusta National Golf Club in 1975. That year, Elder became the first African American to play in the club's Masters tournament.
Three years ago, you'll recall, Martha Burk and her National Council of Women's Organizations campaigned against the Georgia club's we-only-like-boys policy and its embrace by the titans of industry, who sponsor the Masters and who belong as members. She pushed boycotts. Then, playing the Confederate martyr role, Stonewall Hootie decided the tournament could be played two years without corporate sponsors (other than CBS, Hootie's chief enabler, of course) to spare his buddies the heat.
And now, the fuss over with, ExxonMobil, SBC Communications and IBM must have felt that the country had moved sufficiently backward that they stood to lose nothing by sponsoring the tournament again. Companies used to claim, disingenuously, that their sponsorship dollars only supported the Masters Tournament, not the club that puts it on. Hootie himself undermined that fiction last week when he pathetically conceded that the return of corporate sponsors would speed up some needed improvements around Augusta National, including the conversion of parking space to a training facility.
So there you have it -- publicly traded companies with strong anti-discriminatory codes of conduct are spending their money shoring up a bastion of gender discrimination, mainly because it's a playground for CEOs. Talk about a stupid move in the age of Sarbanes-Oxley. Where are the directors of these companies who take their fiduciary duties seriously? The NCWO and lawyers who have brought discrimination cases against Wall Street firms rightly point out that a CEO's membership at Augusta (not to mention his company sponsoring the tournament) is evidence of a corporate culture hostile to women.
Many sportswriters, understandably eager to focus on the game, like to write that this was a ridiculous controversy all along, that we shouldn't get too exercised about who gets to be a member at one hyper-exclusive golf club because it's not really an issue for the rest of us mortals anyway, male or female. Surely working women have more pressing concerns.
