All of a sudden, I kind of want the LPGA to fold. Perish, please, and not because I have anything against the LPGA. I don't. I'm not rooting for the death of the LPGA as a blow against women's golf.
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| Sorry, Cristie Kerr. There's no room for your dumb organization in Doyel's world. (Getty Images) |
Two weeks after outlining a policy it thought could save its dying U.S. tour, the LPGA withdrew that policy under pressure from the ACLU, California democratic machine and media elite. Beginning in 2009 the LPGA had planned to suspend tour members who couldn't speak passable English -- not fluent English, just passable English -- and the wackos took over from there.
In the only defense I can muster for the wackos, the rule was a shock to the American system, a system that does its damnedest not to shock or offend anyone. The rule was unexpected. Bizarre.
The rule was brilliant.
So of course it had to go. Because brilliance scares some, offends others, and generally makes the rest of us uncomfortable. So goodbye, rule. The LPGA on Friday said it was sorry for offending anyone and promised that no player would be suspended for being unable to grunt a few syllables of English. When the LPGA moves its headquarters from Daytona Beach to Seoul in 2012, we'll remember it as another day won by the wackos.
It's times like this when I think the Republicans might have a better handle on reality than everyone else. Republicans aren't into political correctness. Good Lord, when vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin spoke last week at the Republican National Convention, voters in the crowd wore buttons that read, "I'm voting for the hot chick."
I'm voting for the hot chick? That's hilarious. It's refreshing. But the media hated it, so never mind. The LPGA knows all about being on the wrong side of the media, but I'd like to tell the LPGA, and any organization that finds itself in a similar situation, a secret:
When the media agrees on a political topic, and agrees as overwhelmingly as the media agreed on the abhorrence of the LPGA's language policy, run the other way. Pay very close attention to what the media wants, and then do the opposite.
Sorry, media members, but that's the way it is. You, we, are a bunch of wackos. There are reasons a newspaper as amazing as the New York Times has zero credibility with a large portion of Americans. One reason, of course, is that the masses can be gullible souls who fall victim to groupthink.
But another reason is that the Times, like the rest of the traditional media, has gone McGovern and decided political correctness equals correctness. And it doesn't. Not always. Sometimes political correctness is nothing more than intellectual ineptness.
Sticking your brain on a shelf. That's what a friend of mine calls this sort of thinking. Removing your brain, putting it where you can't reach it, is what it takes to see the LPGA as racist or xenophobic for asking its players to speak passable English. Racist and xenophobic ... the LPGA? Last week, before it reneged its language policy, the LPGA highlighted two Asian-born players -- a feature on Thailand's Onnarin Sattayabanphot and a Q-and-A with South Korea's Inbee Park -- on the front page of its website.
The LPGA isn't racist, people. The LPGA is a business, and an unsuccessful business at that. Tour events are closing. Attendance is waning. Interest is dying. A reason, whether you like it or not, is that on any given Sunday the leaderboard is filled with players who cannot communicate with fans, media, sponsors. We don't know these players, and unless the language gap closes, we never will. Without knowing them, we can't root for them. Without rooting, we can't care. This isn't xenophobia. This is common sense.
Many of the LPGA's 45 South Korean players meet the media with a translator, which works there just fine. But it doesn't work earlier in the week when the LPGA stages its biggest money-maker, the pro-am, and sponsors are paired with players who cannot communicate with them. That sort of thing makes sponsors go away. And that sort of thing is making the LPGA go away.
One of the LPGA's richest events, The Ginn Tribute, was canceled last month because of sponsorship issues. Tour stops in Hawaii, Tulsa, Phoenix and Atlanta also are in sponsorship limbo. Sponsors now are said to have been concerned about the LPGA's language policy, but that's a bunch of revisionist history crap. They've caved to media pressure, just as the LPGA did. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The LPGA tour is more popular in Korea and Japan than in America, a major problem for a business based here, with most of its events here. The LPGA isn't trying to keep out great Korean players. It's trying to give those great Korean players, and everyone else, enough U.S. tournaments to show their skills and earn their money.
But ultimately this had to fail. The media went nuts. The ACLU threatened lawsuits. In California, state senator Leland Yee attacked the LPGA's language policy as being "an absolute slap in the face of women, minorities, immigrants." Yee vowed to take his complaints to the California court system -- a system that already had overturned a state law requiring that hospital workers be able to speak English.
So there it is. If you can't visit a hospital in this country and expect to understand your doctor or nurse, forget about visiting an LPGA event and hoping to understand a golfer.
No wonder our country is going down the tubes.
But you go first, LPGA.
