[Guillermo]

Freedom hating B*$%@&^s. They should all go to Hell.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Martha Burk is doing for feminists what Jim Traficant did for hairpieces.

[mewzilla]

Can I ask a silly question? Allowing women to be members of a golf club does NOT mean that guys have to golf with them. I guess I just don't understand the He-Man Women Hater's Club aspect to this.

[Thebaddog]

The answers to the challenges will probably be a great disappointment to the gyrlzz.

And when will the gyrlzz attempt to force Grambling to integrate?

[Bikers4Bush]

Great, now this arrogant whore is telling a private club how to conduct its private business.

[3k9pm]

On the good side though, we now get to see tons of quality golf without the usual 58 minutes of commercials every hour. That, IMHO, is a good thing.

[michigander]

To: Martha Burk

I'm sure you were something before electricity. Hey, you wanna make $14 the hard way?

[Texaggie79]

I was hoping you meant Hootie as in "and the Blowfish".

[isthisnickcool]

Pot calling the kettle black.

This "womens" organization has no more right to demand that Augusta admit women as it does to demand to use my guest room in my home.

[Mr. Mojo]

I hope HJ doesn't give in to these bitter, disgusting, freedom-hating, estrogen-challenged hags. Give 'em hell, Hootie!

[colorado tanker]

Marth Burk is the "Chair" of the National Council of Women's Organizations. So why is it OK to have "women's organizations" but not "men's organizations"??

[doug from upland]

THE LOVELY MS. BURK

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

What would anyone from the NCWO know about morals?Men have a RIGHT to freedom of association just as much as anyone else.This is NOT about rights but CONTROL.Women like this don't need any more rights,they need counselling.

[blau993]

This whole flap bothers me on several levels, not the least of which are the absence of civility and concern for private rights of association. It causes me to think of some personal experiences.

As a young lawyer, I once represented a private club for ladies in a large East Coast City in a zoning/licensing matter. The Club Manager and I left a hearing around noontime, and she invited me to have lunch with her at the club so that we could discuss what had occurred that morning. As we walked to the club, she suddenly remembered this was "ladies only" day in their dining room. This was one of the days on which the symphony orchestra gave its matinee concert, and on those days the club reserved its dining room for ladies coming in for the concert.

Years later, I had the privilege of playing golf at Royal Troon, one of the courses on which the British Open is regularly played. It is men only, though the club's other course, Troon Portland, allows women to play. Since I and my playing companions had our wives with us on this golfing trip, we played Portland with them in the morning, had lunch with them in the one dining room at the club that permitted women, and sent them off to an afternoon of shopping while we played Royal Troon. It proved to be an expensive round of golf when you factored in the cost of their shopping, and it still occasions some "good natured" needling from our wives, but nobody felt a need to make a scene or go to war over it.

Years later, on another trip, we played Royal Aberdeen in Scotland. This is a bear of a golf course with long carries from the tee boxes over heather and gorse to reach the fairways. In a brisk wind which seemed always to be blowing against us (how do golf course designers do that?), we all were struggling, and our wives were dying, because the ladies' tees were often only ten or so yards shorter than the men's tees. After the round, we asked one of the members what their wives thought of the course. His response was that only a handful of very good women golfers ever played it "and we like it that way." The ladies had their own course down the road, and that is where nearly all of their wives chose to play.

The moral? There are rational and irrational reasons for men and women to associate with their own. When they do so in a private club, that is their right. Since I doubt Ms. Whats-her-face will ever understand this, maybe we should just take up a collection and send her shopping during the Masters?

[Lockbox]

Martha Burk, National Council of Women's Organizations

[Jeff Gordon Fan]

hmmm why not all men companies sponser the event they can't be boycotted by women

[Pablo64]

Hootie was more than fair to this woman. My response would have been much shorter:

Dear Ms. Burk,
Bite me!
Respectfully,
Hootie Johnson, et al.

It's not about the golf. It's about their rights as a private club.

[Zon]

An interesting twist would be for Augusta National to announce via press releases that they will admit one female membership (preferably an anti-feminist supermodel) for a membership fee of ten-million dollars.