It Was a Cause With No Effect

Martha Burk didn’t get it.

Free and fawning media attention did not mean her point resonated. Access to the sporting press did not mean that the people of this town, or the fans of golf, or even a large number of women, feel a pressing need for a woman to join Augusta National Golf Club.

She doesn’t understand yet how the Masters as a sporting event can’t easily be attached to the all-male club where it is played.

For nine months Burk has been a media darling. Her cause -- put a woman into all-male Augusta National -- has been praised. She has been portrayed as a necessary voice speaking out bravely against sexism.

It became easy for Burk to listen to the praise. She didn’t notice how silly she sounded when she said the Masters didn’t need to be played at Augusta National. Burk didn’t think how callous she’d sound when she claimed women fighting in Iraq had anything to do with women being admitted to Augusta National.

Burk says she is leaving behind her one-against-one arguments with Augusta National Chairman Hootie Johnson. Burk says now it’s going to be about the corporations, about the CEOs of companies such as IBM, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Citigroup, and about their ill-gotten memberships in a club that leaves women, CEOs and otherwise, at the door.

That’s a fair campaign. Through Johnson, the members of Augusta National have said their membership in the private club is about socializing and smoking cigars and kicking back for a beer with the guys. It is not, they say, a business advantage. It is not about closing a deal by inviting a client for a round of golf at the most hallowed course in the world.

It is that issue Burk should be hammering. She should keep the pressure and spotlight on the club. If any women in business find themselves at a disadvantage because an opposing company’s CEO is entertaining clients at Augusta, that’s a problem.

But by going after the corporations, as she says she will, Burk has put herself at a disadvantage. By mismanaging her campaign to get a woman admitted to Augusta, she has made it easier for CBS to keep broadcasting the event, easier for the PGA Tour to stay on the sidelines, easier for the IBMs and Citigroups to bring back their sponsorships.

Because they saw the support Burk had Saturday in her much-vaunted protest. Fewer than 100 protesters showed up, but there were an inflatable pink pig and dancing puppets. Nearly as many jokesters came to the field on Washington Road as women and men with a legitimate cause. There were more police and reporters than picketers. Anybody with a magic marker and a piece of cardboard could show up and rant.

“I’m tired of this being all about me,” Burk said Saturday. But if that was the impression people had, it was her fault.

Burk had started out way ahead. When Johnson had publicly replied with a belligerent “not at the point of a bayonet” comment to Burk’s private letter asking for an expedited process to sexual integration of the club, she had the attention and sympathy of a good many men and women and the support of a significant portion of those paying attention.

Instead of consolidating her quick gains, instead of acting with reasonable prudence, instead of staying calm and focusing on the points that might have gained her further support, Burk became spoiled.

She mistook the mean-spirited media attacks on Johnson -- who was caricatured as a backward good ol’ boy but is in fact a complicated man who backed civil rights with words and actions and was the first to put a woman on a bank’s board of directors in South Carolina -- as an invitation to mock a tradition that, by law, is allowed.

A private club full of men is not the worst thing in the world right now. Not even close. There is still no groundswell, not even among women, to force a female member into Augusta.

Dr. Shirley Lewis, president of Paine College here, an institution that for well over a century has been dedicated to educating African Americans, spoke of Burk and Augusta National.

Lewis, who has been president of Paine for nine years, grew up mostly in Northern California. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from California and her PhD from Stanford. “My background,” Lewis said, “was certainly well-grounded in the righteousness of protests.”

And yet Lewis found nothing to support in Burk’s cause.

“I know several members of Augusta National,” Lewis said. “They are gracious men and I wouldn’t think of being uncivil to them. Joining these protests would seem like not being a good neighbor. And this is an issue that doesn’t resonate with me. It is not a pressing issue. It is not an interesting issue.”

Burk, when told of Lewis’ view, said that “Dr. Lewis just doesn’t get it then.”

But if Lewis doesn’t get it, Burk has failed in her work.

Burk wanted to blame the “police state” of Augusta or the men of Augusta who are supposedly “rooted in the last century,” or the “company town” as the reasons her weekend protest fizzled.

Yet if a well-educated, well-traveled, self-aware African American woman such as Lewis didn’t get the point, maybe the point wasn’t worth making.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.