Butler and women members?

[Terry Lavin]

Yep I wrongly guessed that the Butler members would do what I thought would be the right thing.  This thread evolved into Schmidt railing against my friend Greenstein, saying that he fabricated sources and made up the story that the club was considering changing its rule. So I was wrong in prediction. On the other hand, Schmidt continued to call the whole story a fiction even as his friends and family members were involved in the very conversations that he denied were occurring. Not that he will admit anything. If there's still a hair on his elitist head, he will split it in an effort to try to win a a bullshit argument. Bullshitting all the way, mind you!

[Jim Nugent]

Yep I wrongly guessed that the Butler members would do what I thought would be the right thing. 

That was your mistake: projecting your values/ideas on Butler.  Seems pretty clear the vast majority of members there don't share your views on this.  Which was Dave's position from the start.     

This thread evolved into Schmidt railing against my friend Greenstein, saying that he fabricated sources and made up the story that the club was considering changing its rule.

Yes, it devolved.  But can you show where Dave said Greenstein fabricated sources?  I saw him repeatedly saying the Trib printed fabrications, but in the 2nd story, not Teddy's. 

  On the other hand, Schmidt continued to call the whole story a fiction even as his friends and family members were involved in the very conversations that he denied were occurring.

He continued to say Butler would not change its policy.  He said the Trib comes up with this same story, year after year, making it sound like change is imminent, where in reality nothing happens.  Again, based on the vote, sounds like he's right. 

[Terry Lavin]

I'm not going to go through the entire thread and back up my case against a guy who keeps moving the goalpoasts, but I would offer this to Shivas and his new, pro-bono defense counsel, the Tribune stories that generated all of this gasbaggery ARE AND WERE ENTIRELY TRUE.  That is unassailably true.  Are you going to try and argue the opposite?  If so, I guess you can add Bob Clifford and Mike Keiser, both friends of mine, to the list of people that you claim aren't being straight with you.  The stories are true.  The club WAS looking into the possibility of changing the men-only policy, in an effort to bring in a major and more members.  It didn't fly with the membership, but they were FORMALLY looking into it.  It wasn't just rumor or chatter, they were working on it, hired a pro and communicated with the membership via mail on the subject.  And when all of this was being chatted about, I had a copy of the letter that the club had sent out.  I agreed to keep it quiet, as my friend requested, but Dave's "five in-laws" had the letter too and he kept saying that it was a fiction.  He even denied there was a letter to the members.

Again, I'm not going to go through the entire thread to impeach my eminently impeachable, blowhard friend Mr. Schmidt, but I'll just offer up this little nugget to animate my thoughts.

BTW, yes. I'm accusing a Tribune reported (Teddy specifically) of reporting as fact something he has no on the record, citable, first hand sources for. Butler REFUSED to confirm. No second source is cited. Moreover, I'm accusing the Tribune of intentionally morphing Teddy's unnamed, supposedly industry sources into Butler itself to lend credibility to the second story. In the context of a 7 year annual, recurring "story", that is the only logical conclusion. Error is simply not plausible in this case.  A paper that makes  this kind of errors on this kind of loaded story would have folded long before the Internet and blogging forced its demise. This was intentional, fabricated, motivated and born of an agenda. Pure and simple.

Have you read Ed Sherman's piece?  He's the guy who first wrote the story 7 years ago or whatever it was. Even HE doesn't believe it, and as a long term golf writer, he presumably has even better sources than Teddy, who is a relative golf-writing rookie.

Keep splitting hairs if you will, but pretty soon, you'll be down to a Brazilian, if you get my drift.   

The stories were true, they have been proved to be true, by prominent and knowledgeable men, both former members, one an industry person as well.  Give me some more of your Medill School of Journalism lectures.  I seem to recall they have great journalistic standards.  It's been widely written about how helpful they were in the wrongful conviction arena...

[Jim Nugent]

Terry, a prominent attorney quitting the club over this suggests the policy is entrenched, and very unlikely to change.  You said he couldn't even get the members to openly discuss the matter.  So what chance did it ever really have? 

Whatever studies the club did, the overwhelming majority of members don't want women there.  And from what Dave says, this has been true, year after year after year, even as the Trib keeps reporting change may be imminent. 

If Keiser -- who quit the club around 20 years ago -- thought Butler was going to vote for the change, he very much misread the tea leaves.   

 

[Terry Lavin]

Jim,

That's all well and good and not particularly debatable.  I like Butler just fine as an invited guest.  I'm not offended by the all male policy.  This was just about whether the club was "strongly considering" the possibility of changing the rule.  It had been the subject of chatter at the club for years and last year, they took formal steps.  The members didn't express enough of an interest to change the bylaws.  I think it's shortsighted and not in line with the mission of the club.  Others could disagree.  This whole exchange has been about accusing a reporter and/or a newspaper of making up a story.  Of having fabricated sources.  Or lying sources.  And now that everything is more in the open, now that there's been some sunshine on the issue, it turns out that everything he said was TRUE.  Now, I've known this guy for a number of years and he is an honest man.  And I know who he's been talking to.  And they are honest men.  And I know the men who were quoted in the current story.  And they are honest men.

An honest man just might admit that the reporter and the newspaper were right on this issue all along, even if the reporter was unable to get a name on the record last year.  It was true last year and plenty of people knew it.  The letter went out last year and plenty of people knew it.  The guy you're defending actually laughed off the "fact" of a letter, by saying:

"Interesting. When did this supposed letter go out?  Well, as of about 30 seconds ago, my best sources are laughing about the BS nature of this whole laughable pipe dream. But what would they know? They've only lived their whole lives there..."

We are supposed to believe that he didn't know about the letter.  That he didn't ask about the letter.  That his in laws didn't tell him about the letter.

What Shivas did in the course of dozens of posts on this thread is act like everything in the story was fiction when he knew, or should have known, that it was FACT.  Plenty of people knew it was fact, with or without cited sources.  In effect, he was like Johnnie Cochran defending O.J. Simpson.  Piss on the prosecution and the police for rushing to judgment, for botching the scene investigation, knowing all the while that he killed her.  Well, Cochran had a duty to a client and I can't object to that.  But he killed her.  Butler was looking into this issue at the time the stories were written.  The sources were there and now there are cited sources in the article.

If you want to play Cochran to his inner O.J., I welcome you to the task, but he was wrong then and he's wrong now to not admit that he was wrong.

[Terry Lavin]

I rest my case.

[John McCarthy]

I just read the article.  It seems to me that it seems to put an end to the thought that Butler is changing in the near future.  

For what it is worth I heard (secondhand) that there was a vote last spring/summer and the results were as reported in the new article.  

The next question is where the next US Open will be held in Chicagoland?  

[Jud_T]

Bottom line,

Chicago has no Open but the largest concentration of sausage-fest clubs on the planet.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Shivas,

It wouldn't be the first time the media tried to influence an outcome, on and off the golf course