Samizdat

Lady golfer to town: "You just don't get it."
Bad publicity for Dennis, bad business for its golf courses

Would they let Michelle Wie play?By Jeff Blanchard 

By suing the Town of Dennis in federal court for unspecified damages, Elaine Joyce is pushing to become Cape Cod's version of Annika Sorenstam or Michelle Wie, lady golfers who are sometimes invited to play with the boys.

 Joyce tried the nice way, asking, but without success, and so brought her case first to the state and then to US Court in Boston, along the way picking up a lawyer, a spokesperson and a trail of press clippings attesting to the battle.

 To date, the town has amended its slate of summer tournaments by adding women's divisions to men's tournaments, but it has yet to throw open the tees to the point of allowing Joyce to compete directly against the men, as an individual or as part of a team in a men's tournament.

So when Dennis said in a press statement that the town already made an accomodation to Joyce by amending its 2008 slate, Joyce's press person responded thus:

Jeff:
No doubt you'll see a story in the Cape Cod Times today wherein the Town of Dennis maintains that they changed their golf policy on October 22 to adhere to national standards, presumably satisfying Ms. Joyce's request.

Were that the case, why would they file a position statement with the MCAD, two weeks later (November 2, 2007) and not only not mention that fact, but instead, argue that "the facts don't give rise to discrimination of any kind" and that "once the Complainant's concern was brought to the Respondent's attention, [they] agreed to modify the schedule, such that all tournaments would include a men's and women's division beginning in 2008."
Why is it so hard for the Town to understand that Ms. Joyce simply wants to play in golf tournaments at her level, without regard to the sex of her competition?
If you have an opportunity to correct for your readers the misinformation they may pick up in the Cape Cod Times, I would appreciate your doing so.
Thanks.

Karen Schwartzman

Agreement, disagreement, along gender lines 

Meanwhile, the Times article quoted several local golf figures such as teaching professional Jane Frost, who sided with Joyce, and magazine publisher Paul Reiss, Sr., who sided with the club. What will be interesting to see is how much money the town is willing to spend to back the club. Joyce already put her money where her mouth is. When the taxpayers learn, if they ever will, how much the town is spending to beat back the insurgency, things could change for town hall.

 At stake for Joyce is fixing the world, one overly restrictive municipal golf club at a time. If she loses, she goes back to beating up on her lady friends; see the 20 club championships she's compiled so far.

 At stake for the town is however much it ends up costing, a number that could soar like a well-struck driver if the decision does not go its way -- with the town's legal fees already mounting, plus Joyce's legal fees and whatever damages the court deems suitable to send a message.

 Could be better than the tournament action this summer.
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Previous story;
Dennis hoisted on its own pétard -- or putter [cctoday]

   A deterrent to other towns & clubs that if you behave badly, you will pay
   Thirty-five years after Billie Jean King -- Elaine Joyce

   ^{Elaine Joyce at the Dennis Pines Golf Course. Image courtesy of Polaris Public Relations.}

By Jeff Blanchard

With unspecified damages sought from the town of Dennis and several of its agents, local golfer Elaine Joyce is suing in federal court to have her way on the golf courses of Dennis and beyond.

"This isn't just about Dennis Pines or Dennis Highlands, and this isn't about money. I filed this suit to fix things for women." - Elaine Joyce"This isn't just about Dennis Pines or Dennis Highlands," said Joyce, 43, "and this isn't about money," she added. "I filed this lawsuit to fix things for women who have been discriminated against for a long time. By making an example out of Dennis, I hope the action serves as a deterent to other towns and other clubs that if you behave badly there is a price to pay, and it's a hefty price."

"About 20 people who work for the town of Dennis from the town administrator to the golf commission to the golf director and the pro, they all got it wrong," Joyce said, despite her having met personally with several of them in an attempt to iron things at the course, not the court.

The straw that broke this camel's back 

The straw that broke the camel's back came last summer when she was not allowed to join her father as his partner in a men's tournament. This morning, I was directed by a town employee to consider that the town has changed its policy for this upcoming season, and now calls the tournament simply a member-member, gender neutral, and cites the USGA for its interpretation of what that means.

In any event, this new policy toward women, if that's what it is, does nothing to mollify Joyce, who is pursuing damages based on past conduct, not future behavior, and has named the town administrator and all the top golf officials past and present who had a hand in the decision last season to disallow her from playing in a men's tournament, and to segregate men and women in other realms of the tee-time and tournament system.

Her goal is to be able to freely associate with better talent as a basic tenet of all competitive athletesJoyce has the game for any league, as a 3-handicap, and says her goal is to be able to freely associate with better talent as a basic tenet of all competitive athletes.

A top woman's competitor 

A software designer who is single and lives in Yarmouth Port, Joyce is a resident member of the Dennis municipal golf at Pines and Highland by dint of her trusteeship in a Dennis property. A graduate of Dennis-Yarmouth High, same as LPGA great Sally Quinlan, Golfweek editor Jeff Babineau and Brad Eaton (see above), Joyce has a few Top 5 finishes in WGAM events and roughly 20 club championships between Dennis and the courses of Yarmouth, Bayberry Hills and Bass River especially.

Not her first turf war 

Ten years ago, Joyce said she fought a similar battle in Yarmouth over her ability to play with the block-tee-time blessed Forty Thieves. Not only could she not, they determined in a 39-1 vote, they changed their name to the Forty Thieves Men's League.

Then, however, she took her battle to Town Hall and convinced the town counsel and town administrator in Yarmouth that women deserved access to more or less whatever they wanted if the alternative is to discriminate against them just because they are women.

"But the people in Dennis ignored the example set by Yarmouth and that's why the issue must be forced, not just for these towns and clubs on the Cape, but everywhere," said Karen Schwartzman, a public relations specialist working for the lawyers who filed suit in Boston.

Thirty-five years after Billie Jean King - Elaine Joyce

Thirty-five years after Billie Jean King showed the world what a chauvinist pig that Bobby Riggs was, Elaine Joyce has taken the baton. Stay tuned. This could get interesting.

The filed complaint in its entirety is available in PDF form here.
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Below is the release from the attorney's PR firm;
TOWN OF DENNIS, TOWN GOLF COURSE ADMINISTRATORS FACE FEDERAL LAWSUIT
ALLEGING SEX DISCRIMINATION

Plaintiff Claims Men-only Tournaments Violate Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution and the Commonwealth's Public Accommodation Statute   

February 18, 2008 - Boston, MA -  In a complaint filed this past Friday in US District Court, Town of Yarmouth (Cape Cod) resident Elaine Joyce alleges that the Town of Dennis, through the actions of the administrators of its two public golf courses, discriminated against her on the basis of sex, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Commonwealth's public accommodation statute (M.G.L.ch.272, §§ 92A and 98). 
     The complaint arises from a decision by Town administrators made in the spring of 2007, denying Ms. Joyce the right to play in a particular golf tournament held at Dennis Pines Golf Course, where she is a member, solely because she is a woman.  Ms. Joyce (43), an avid, three-handicap golfer, had signed up with her father to compete in a "mens member-member tournament" but, through a message delivered only to her father, was told that she could not play and that if her father still chose to play, he would have to find a male partner.  Thereafter - and to this day -- despite requests to re-visit and change the policy - and despite notice that a policy that denies women the right to play in a golf tournament in a place of public accommodation - solely on the basis of gender -- violates the law, the Town has held firm in its commitment to holding tournaments that welcome men only.
     "The Town of Dennis has made it clear that they seek to perpetuate an ‘historic custom' of offering ‘men only' golf tournaments," said Laura R. Studen of the law firm Burns & Levinson, representing Joyce.  "Perhaps they view this as a frivolous exercise - suggesting as they do that the slight is easily addressed by offering women-only tournaments as well.  They miss the point.
     "Though the activity giving rise to my client's complaint is the game of golf, denying Ms. Joyce her Constitutionally-protected rights to enjoy the same rights as a man at a public golf course is as unlawful and degrading as the once ‘historic custom' of men's-only bars or of white's-only drinking fountains - practices which only served to perpetuate the social and economic inferiority of a class of people and couldn't be rationalized by any legal standard," Studen continued.
     "Elaine Joyce is entitled to the equal opportunity to aspire, to achieve, and to participate based upon her individual talents and capacities regardless of her gender.  She seeks no special accommodation - but instead, only the opportunity to play her sport at her level and competitively with other club members who are equally strong and equally competitive.  Because she is such an accomplished golfer, at Dennis Pines, almost all of those who play equally or better than she - are men."
     Ms. Joyce has brought suit against The Town of Dennis; Dennis Pines Golf Course; Dennis Highlands Golf Course; Town Administrator Robert Canevazzi; then Dennis Director of Golf Dennis Penner; Director of Golf and Head Golf Course Superintendent Michael Cummings; and Dennis PGA Head Golf Professional Russell Champoux.
     "The Town's refusal to correct this historically discriminatory practice -- which makes women second-class citizens on their public golf courses -- is sadly all too common," said Joyce.  "While I've never gotten to the point of suing anyone before, this kind of discrimination is not new to me.
     "This is about a lot more than golf," Joyce continued.  "It's about stopping once and for all discriminatory practices that are clearly illegal and prevent women from fully participating and reaping all of the social and economic benefits that come with full participation."

Goods News! Now We Know What Evil Lurks on the Ringing Phone

By Jeff Blanchard

Not that the phone lines have been completely fumigated of telemarketers, but things have been a lot better in recent years, since the advent of the Do Not Call lists. No longer is every other caller looking to sell you something that doesn’t exist, or worse, a recorded message.

After a hue and cry across the land, FCC rules forced many of these con artists to pack up their boiler rooms and shove on down the road, and many became mortgage brokers.

The only persistent telemarketers left were the phony cops, the phony vets, and your alma mater. Suddenly the calls were all more or less friendly, and the ringing phone usually meant someone in the house had a call. The added advantage to this new post-telemarketing age was that all calls could be ignored equally, since your friendlies usually have identifications, and can be called back.

Telemarketers made phone management difficult because of the lack of information, the strange numbers; Private and Unavailable became little mysteries unto themselves.

Elections put an end to that peace 

So for a while there, all was quiet on the telemarketing front, and then along comes Election Time....and Boom! Beep-beep! Ring! The phone is going nuts with hacks! More callers looking to sell you something that doesn’t exist! The ultimate tele-vangelicaller, the politician! The politician and the celebrities who need them!

Minutes ago I hung up on Danny Ainge, shilling for whom I do not know. Sorry, Dan, you didn’t get that far... I’m guessing, Ainge = BYU, Romney = BS, maybe this is my Mormon moment...not that it would have mattered which candidate, or for that matter which celebrity was calling. If it had been Mother Theresa from the grave [Bless me, Father...], I still would have hung up.

Whether this is an unintended consequence of the clampdown on telemarking, or an integral part of some conspiracy to clear the airwaves for just politicians and phony cops, phony vets and alma maters, it hardly matters.

What matters now is that when you hear the phone ringing at Election Time, and see it is not a name or number you recognize, you know immediately everything you need to know about the caller, that on this day, the very last slimy thing allowed under the closing gate of federal law is a politician who wants your vote, and he or she is on the phone.

[Full disclosure: my own feelings on the 2008 Presidential Election and today's primary...I was sailing along on the good ship Obama, but then Ted climbed aboard and I went flying off the other side...Bad, bad things happen to people around him, and I like Barack.]

Because, with the Christa Worthington murder case, nothing is ever as it seems, today's hearing for a retrial may have struck some as a dull, ritualistic three-hour torture session, another painful slog with no end, this time held in a cramped side court in Barnstable, a session with little fanfare, none of big TV trucks parked outside and none of the posh trappings of the previous hearings that were held in the big, ornate courtroom with two tiers and everywhere history.

Delainda Miranda went toe-to-toe with Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, and then matched wits with Judge Gary Nickerson who seemed  irritated by the DA's conductBut it was no less dramatic for those of us in the room and no less monumental for the man in the middle, the shackled and temporarily among us Christopher McCowen, who is brought to these hearings from his cell at Walpole in a van that doubles as a rolling cage with plenty of windows for everyone to see.

McCowen is back in jail now, to be sure, and may be there for a while. But, just as surely, he is going to have his case heard again, and for that he has many people to thank, most recently Delainda Miranda, who went toe-to-toe with Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, and then matched wits with Judge Gary Nickerson, and left the stand as others had before her, one more voice in a chorus of men and women who testified to the bad behavior of the jury in the deliberations that led to the conviction and life sentence of Chris McCowen in the murder of Christa Worthington, a single mother whose baby was left to scramble for her own survival after a knife ended her mother's in January, 2002.

Here this morning was 74-year old grandmother Delainda Miranda, who had the temerity, if not the good sense, to involve herself in L'Affair Worthington by remarking to a writer at a hearing last month that her grand nephew, juror Eric "Billy" Gomes, had been uttering racial epithets since about 15, and had a well-known history of racial intolerance, irrespective of, or informed by, his own Cape Verdean heritage.

This was enough to get her subpoened to appear in court, which she did, and stuck to her guns even while first O'Keefe, and then Nickerson, asked her a battery of questions designed more it seemed toward impeaching her credibility than to enhance her stature for having come forward.

To O'Keefe's suggestion that she herself had on occasion used a specific bad word, she allowed as to Yes, how she had, but of course it was well-established that she had not been a member of the McCowen jury.

Although it was true that McCowen's fate hung in the balance, it was just as true that O'Keefe's performance as a prosecutor was the thing on trial nowTo Nickerson's suggestion that she exchanged a glance at the last hearing with the writer, Peter Manso, she said No, didn't happen -- but the impression was left that if she had said yes, it would have carried some other, more sinister meaning that was lost on at least one observer.

O'Keef's rubber bands replaced Queeg's ball bearings 

Although it was true that McCowen's fate hung in the balance, it was just as true that O'Keefe's performance as a prosecutor was the thing on trial now, and O'Keefe passed good chunks of his listening time by twirling a large rubber band from his right index finger...literally just sitting alone at his table for two and twirling one of those over-sized rubber bands like a kid with a new toy, or Queeg in Herman' Wouk's Caine Mutiny, in which Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg, played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1954 movie, saw his mental health slip and his crew mutiny and his career fall apart.

Instead of Queeg playing with a handful of balls at his court martial, here we had O'Keefe twirling a rubber band -- and for everyone in the small courtroom to see -- during a hearing to reconsider the biggest case of his career, and it could not have been missed by anyone in the room, least of all the judge.

George argued that he had proven the jury's taint, had shown the unfairness of the decision, and had supplied the evidence necessary for a new trial, not with one juror who submitted an affadavit attesting to racial bias among other jurors, but with three.

"They stood pat on essentially all of what they're saying on their affadavits," George said. The court repeatedly heard similar versions of comments that could be construed either as ethnically oriented, racially biased, or "outright racist."

Chubby and easy with a smile, but all business in terms of courtroom demeanor, George went all through the relevant case history and came out the other side convinced that he had attempted to prove nothing, and in the process proved a lot, that he doesn't want to change the law on these sorts of things, but only wants to change the result for his client; he also stroked the judge for his good discretion in ordering the hearings and for his conduct throughout the trial, from vois dire to the present, none of which should be blamed on him, as the bad stuff all happened "behind closed doors."

The burden of proof that a fair trial was conducted has thus moved to the commonwealthThe burden of proof that a fair trial was conducted has thus moved to the commonwealth, he said. This wasn't a case where a juror's unspoken bias was alleged afterward. "People were talking about it, so we know it occured here. Now we have to do something about it."

"On balance," O'Keefe told Nickerson, "there isn't any question this jury wasn't more than fair." The court should treat the assertions of one juror as a form of retribution for having been bounced off the jury for lying. Another should be considered in light of the fact that she asked the court to help cover the expenses of her trip back to Cape Cod to testify. And the third juror who complained about racial bias suffered from what O'Keefe characterized as "buyer's remorse."

Jury deliberations are like sausage making, he said. "It's not a pretty process, but we expect the results to be good."

A 74-year old grandmother Delainda Miranda, who had the temerity, if not the good sense, to involve herself in L'Affair WorthingtonDelainda Miranda was asked by O'Keefe why she came forward in January, and not before.

Before, she said, her family told her "don't get into it, but I couldn't let it go on any longer."

Let what go on? O'Keefe asked.

"Oh, c'mon," she told the district attorney. "This is not a joke."

All the while, as the embattled DA was sparring with the great aunt of a former juror, sparring over a man's biased attitude toward blacks, Chris McCowen sat silent as a Buddha, silent, focused, and shackled at the feet.

O'Keeke loses his cool 

Judge Nickerson said he would not rule on the new trial until the lawyers have filed legal briefs in the coming weeks. But he left the court with the clear impression that he already has decided there is enough to order a retrial. If the racial taint could be considered something "extraneous" to the case, that'd be one thing. "But when it's internal," when a biased jury represents "a fundamental flaw" in the application of justice, a new trial is required, and he will take the matter under advisement in a manner consistent with his feeling that time and distance are beneficial to a sound decision.

In the apparent belief that he was arguing a losing case, O'Keefe continued to argue even after the judge had made his final commentsIn the apparent belief that he was arguing a losing case, O'Keefe continued to argue even after the judge had made his final comments, and asked the court when it might be scheduling a hearing on the other motion pending in the McCowen retrial attempt, relating to evidence the prosecution allegedly withheld from the defense during the trial.

"We should hold a hearing?" Judge Nickerson asked.

Before the matter stretches into "the next millenium," O'Keefe said.

To which Nickerson replied, in reference to the motion, "I'll figure that out after I've read it."

He assured everyone that he is moving as fast as he can, and he hopes that people can appreciate the difficulty of his position as the same human being who conducted the trial and who is now conducting a hearing that would discredit the results of the trial, not to mention the prosecutor whose performance in the Christa Worthington murder case has been shameful from the very beginning.