Comedian’s men-only golf email laughable
A TV network hit the rough with comedian Kathleen Madigan in February by telling her she couldn’t golf in a celebrity pro-am tournament that features male comics.
Madigan, who performs Friday at The Mirage, was invited by a corporate CEO involved in the tourney. Then she received a rejection email from the TV network.
She says the TV network justified her exclusion, “because we don’t have any women playing in this tournament.”
“I was shocked,” Madigan, a regular golfer, tells me. “I was like, ‘Wow, you’re dumb enough to put that in writing?’ ”
Madigan feels as if she got “punched in the face,” because she was minding her own business when she got invited, then uninvited.
Yet she won’t tell me which TV network or golf tournament this was, because she doesn’t want to start a war of “crap” between herself and a few big businesses.
“I don’t want to be the first wave in Normandy, because you get there and you feel nothing but uncomfortable. I’m a nice Libra. I don’t like to be in confrontation,” Madigan says.
“But you know what? (Expletive) you guys. I’ll just go golf with Lew (Lewis Black) and Ron (Ron White). They like me. They want me to play.”
I told her she sounds like a lazy feminist, since she won’t commit to shaming the companies by name. She laughed.
“I know! It’s terrible! I would have been a terrible suffragette. As soon as jail might be involved? No way!” she said.
“I watched a special on Gloria Steinem and I totally agree with her. I just can’t get motivated. Maybe I should just forward the email to her and let her do something about it.”
On her blog, Madigan also ridiculed the Masters at Augusta, which didn’t admit black male golfers until 1990, for continuing to keep women out.
She put a good joke on her blog: “What exactly is the perk of no women? Are strippers being brought in? Hookers?”
She told me there is one supposed justification for sexism that makes her anger overcome her laziness to resist anger.
“I do get mad when people who aren’t a minority say, ‘You can go start your own.’ Well, we don’t have the money you guys have, because the white guys got here first and got all the money,” Madigan says.
“Blacks and women weren’t even allowed to own land or vote” until decades ago. “We’re trying to catch up.”
But she’s a comedian, so let’s wrap up this golfing shame with a laugh: Madigan says some guy told her it’s OK for the Masters to exclude women, because Curves health clubs are for women.
“Seriously? You’re gonna compare what is basically a merry-go-round of StairMasters with 75-year-old women on them to Augusta National golf club? Come on.
“And I’m not sure Curves wouldn’t let a guy in. But no man in his right mind would want to be in there. It’s horrifying.”
By the way, men can join Curves in some states, and the company was co-founded by … a white guy with a mustache.
Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
