AUGUSTA, Ga. - Freedom fighter Martha Burk doesn't bother with the little inconveniences. Why bog yourself down with women's issues such as spousal abuse, breast cancer and workplace equality, when you can tackle the larger issue of female membership at Augusta National Golf Club?

It is very important to Burk that a woman crash the good ol' boys party at Augusta National. And when we say ol', we mean ol'. The average age of an Augusta member is 78. Why would any woman want to be a part of that lively bunch?

The Great Martha-Hootie Debate has taken center stage. It has supplanted even Tiger Woods. All Woods is trying to do this week is commit history by winning his third straight Masters. On Wednesday, Tiger might as well have been at the zoo.

"We are here to have the Masters tournament," Masters chairman Hootie Johnson announced. (Hootie pronounces it "toonamint.") "We have no timetable (to admit a woman), and our membership is very comfortable with our present status. Our club will continue to make its own decisions."

As Johnson declared, "If I drop dead right now, our position will not change, I promise you." The 60 Augusta National members ringing the interview room looked on admiringly.

You could dislike these old gentlemen. It's easy. They are rich and elitist. They can be haughty. They will not be told how to run their club, or their toonamint. You can believe Burk's cause is just, if only for the symbolism it offers. If you are liberal and a media member, you could snicker at Hootie's drawl and his saying sewing circles are biased against men. It might make you feel intellectually superior.

You could even listen to Johnson's "drop dead" arrogance and think to yourself, "If only ..."

It doesn't change the correctness of the club's position. It is possible to be right without being right, if that makes sense. As Johnson said, "The fact is, we are a private club."

Should women be members at Augusta National? Of course. Should the current membership be bullied into admitting them? Of course not.

Clubs, by nature, are exclusionary. "Exclusive" clubs exclude. By gender, wealth, birth, intellect and a thousand other ways. I'll never be a Girl Scout, a MENSA member, a Daughter of the American Revolution or a participant in the Black Family Reunion. Or a member of Augusta National.

And really, so what?

Martha Burk is a silly woman. She is silly when she compares women fighting in Iraq to her cause. She is sillier when she likens this issue to that of African American servicemen who fought in World War II and came home to Jim Crow laws. She is off-the-charts asinine when she says this, as quoted in The New Yorker:

"When men get together, denigrating women is often a part of the social interaction. When women get together, denigrating men is rarely done."

Sadly, Martha-versus-Hootie is typical of the discourse in America now: trivial issues given too much importance by overheated media latching on to a hot-button issue dominated by politically correct rhetoric. Johnson tried to talk about golf Wednesday morning, in the state-of-the-state news conference he gives every year.

He couldn't. We peppered him with Martha questions.

It doesn't matter that Johnson was co-chair of a committee that helped desegregate South Carolina's universities, or that he got money from the state legislature to fund an undergraduate business program at all-black South Carolina State, in 1968. "He became a symbol of racial healing," I.S. Leevy Johnson, a prominent black lawyer in the state, told The New Yorker.

All that matters is that Martha Burk, head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, thinks Hootie Johnson is a bigot.

Here at the Masters, it's cold. It's wet. Tiger Woods is trying to make history, and all we're talking about is Hootie and Martha. Somebody stole the toonamint. Maybe by Sunday, we'll get it back.

"It has been maligned," Johnson said, when someone asked him how the controversy had affected the event. "But I don't think it's been damaged." One can hope.

On Saturday, Martha Burk's group and others are supposed to protest against Augusta National, on a 5-acre tract of boggy grass about a half-mile from the club. With any luck, it'll rain.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com