Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

One of the most odious songs of all time is "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." Oscar Hammerstein II, whose name should be revered for as long as people sing his lyrics -- which, with any justice, will be forever -- was a very earnest liberal, and in a show that touched more than peripherally on race prejudice he had to make a point -- a valid point in its day, a point that got South Pacific in trouble when it played the water-fountain-segregating South. One could call it Broadway's first protest song. In time, however, more and more very earnest people -- the longhairs of Tom Lehrer's Folk Song Army come to mind -- got the notion to preach equally very earnest thoughts, and in time preachments crowded out the simple pleasures of a love song (of which Hammerstein was a master). One reason the jaysonists forever blurb the GENIUS of rap is that it's ALL protest. I wouldn't say Hammerstein helped ruin popular music -- a man who can write "You Are Love" I will not accuse of ruining anything -- but his very earnest liberalism didn't help it.

I mention this song because all week the jaysonists have been singing it at eardrum-rending levels about you-know-who. Her story in another time could have been charming, even inspirational, the triumph of a lone woman in a big man's world, but when today's NEWS HACKS get through with it you want to SCREAM. It started with their usual thoughtpolice gag on Vijay Singh and Nick Price for daring to be politically incorrect, and it has culminated in tidal waves of slobber from unathletes who ordinarily view golf as a conspiracy, who despise the players as zillionaire rednecks (and what is worse, REPUBLICANS), who associate the game with decadence and snobbery and AUGUSTA, all of whom in the presence of the PC sex became INSTANT GOLF EXPERTS, effusing that you-know-who had a BRILLIANT ROUND even though she trailed more than half the field. Well, if there isn't a certain justice in the fact that the GREAT WHITE, er, FEMALE, er, WOMYN HOPE of GOLF, the woman who brought a NOBLE CRUSADE into the cosseted country club, the woman who played one the most HISTORIC, COURAGEOUS, DETERMINED ROUNDS of golf EVER -- in short, A FAVORITE OF THE JAYSONISTS -- has

MISSED THE CUT!!!!!

(In deference to you, HOWELL, we'll say she MSed the cut.)