The Battle For Augusta National by Alan Shipnuck

Author:Alan Shipnuck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER Rockefeller Center
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“What’s the first sign of spring at Augusta? The magnolias bloom and the bedsheets appear.

“How many Augusta members does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They just ask the nearest imperial wizard to light a cross.”

Killion continued: “If you take an extreme position, as Augusta National has done, you’re going to have extremist bedfellows. Sheets and all.”

On the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cynthia Tucker fleshed out the point: “Johnson ought to spend some time considering his new status as KKK hero. The adage you can judge a man by the friends he chooses has a corollary: You can also judge a man by the friends who choose him. Just what does Harper see in Hootie? Why, a man who shares his philosophy of exclusion, of course.”

Phil Sheridan, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, offered the most over-the-top piece on the Klan and Augusta National, under the headline “Yo, Augusta: K-K-Kiss Your Argument Goodbye.” “Everything Johnson says in defense of his club’s exclusionary policies could just as easily come from the mouth of some Imperial Wizard somewhere,” Sheridan wrote. “You could argue, in fact, that the KKK is more honest than Augusta. The Klan makes no apologies for its racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-everything-else ideology. The Klan is proud of that. Heck, that’s what the Klan is. Johnson, on the other hand, has had to engage in all manner of doublespeak in order to state his case….

“In a world debating war [in Iraq] and coping with the threat of terrorism … it’s very hard to get worked up about whether Buffy Sue Rich-lady is playing Augusta as a member or a guest. The Klan changes all of that. Instantly. Even if this splinter group doesn’t follow through with its demonstration, the damage is done to Hootie and his blowhards. There is no going back to any reasonable discussion about the issue, nor should there be…. Sorry, Mr. Johnson, that’s life in the hood.”

Actually, it would be nice if the introduction of an extremist element into an intellectual argument caused clear-eyed observers to tone down their own rhetoric rather than ratchet it up. The few pundits who looked beyond the easy punch line discovered that J. J. Harper was just one guy with a flashy title and a colorful Web site. Organizations that monitor hate groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), dismissed Harper as the sole member of his organization, which led to a catchy new nickname—the One Man Klan. The KKK as the embodiment of evil was seriously undermined by a goofy photo on Harper’s Web site, in which he was sitting on a tractor-style lawn mower with two well-groomed poodles on his lap. This image inspired one of the most memorable quotes of the membership controversy, when Joe Roy of the SPLC told the New York Daily News, “If he shows up at Augusta with his two poodles, he’ll have a protest of three.” (It was this kind of dismissive reaction that validated the decision of Jim

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