Dear Martha Burk:

On behalf of couch golfers everywhere, thank you for your nagging protests that allowed us to watch the Masters Tournament without commercials.

While you were whinnying in the protest corral, we were able to enjoy the Masters without ads for investments we can't afford and German cars so expensive you need a mortgage to buy one, not a loan.

In case you missed it, there was an interesting story about the Eisenhower tree. Former President Eisenhower hit the tree so many times at Augusta that he campaigned to have it cut down.

This is the man who campaigned quite successfully against the Nazis and for the White House. But the tree is still standing. Does that give you a clue about your chances to bully the geriatrics in green jackets into uprooting their tradition of male members only? I didn't think so.

Hooked on tobacco

But I'd like to thank you anyway, with an award in your name: The Martha Burk Award to honor accidental service to our country. My nominees:

• Philip Morris, for warning that a $10.1 billion verdict in Illinois could bankrupt them and snuff out $2.6 billion in tobacco settlement payoffs to 46 states including Ohio.

The states sided with Philip Morris, proving what we all suspected: They're in the tobacco business. The same politicians who sued to kill "big tobacco" are now fighting to rescue it. State government looks like black-sheep Uncle Barfly - hooked on cigarettes, gambling and liquor.

• A visiting "civil rights leader," James Bevel, and Bond Hill minister the Rev. William Land, for their boycott of good taste. According to the Cincinnati Post, at a "unity" church service for the boycott of Cincinnati on April 6, Bevel said, "George Bush is on a campaign of murder, rape and robbery" in Iraq. Land called Bush "retarded."

Both deserve Burk Awards for reminding us what the boycott gang means by "unity."

• Andy Rooney, whose apology for being wrong about the war unintentionally put a glaring spotlight on all the anti-war pundits and politicians who have not apologized for being extravagantly wrong.

• The local "Goths'' who were interviewed about the war for a recent Enquirer story. They unintentionally showed us how that nose-stapled face of their generation is as outdated as Michael Jackson's disco moonwalk, compared with the heroic 20-something soldiers who liberated Iraq.

War is no 'gimme'

• All the headline writers who have told us, "Now comes the hard part" in Iraq. Thanks for reminding us of all the Americans who lost their lives in Iraq. Tell it to the families who are grieving over flag-draped coffins.

• CNN news boss Eason Jordan, whose confession that he covered up murders and torture by Saddam has unintentionally reminded us why we can't trust "news" that is manipulated by dictators and their useful idiots.

Every golfer knows even that the most stupid shot can accidentally turn out great. And from now on, we will call those shots "Marthas."

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com, or call 768-8301.