THE KKK TOOK MY GOLF BALL AWAY: The annual Masters golf tournament, scheduled for next month, was already expected to be a circus due the long-simmering controversy over whether or not women can be admitted to the Augusta National golf club. But now the Masters wack factor is heading off the charts, because none other than the Ku Klux Klan has announced that they will demonstate during Masters weekend.
It's certainly bad news for Augusta chairman Hootie Johnson that, on the eve of the Masters media blitz, he has to deal with the PR nightmare of the KKK being on his side. I feel that the most responsible way for Augusta, and the media, to handle the Klan's presence is just to ignore it. The Klan hasn't had a great deal of national influence for about two decades, and as journalist Christopher Caldwell has pointed out, the average Klan rally in recent years has generally pit about six Klansmen against about 500 counter-demonstrators. For the media to give the KKK's presence any attention whatsoever would be to give them the legitimacy that they crave and don't deserve- and seemingly put them on the same level as Martha Burk's feminist protestors, or Hootie Johnson himself.