Over this past weekend, the golf world held its Masters Tournament for the 80th time. I’m a fan of the game and happened to catch an interview with Gary Player, who coincidentally turned 80 this past November. Player married his wife Vivienne and joined the PGA tour in 1957. At the age of 80, he’s no longer playing professional golf, but he and Vivienne are still married. He has 173 professional wins to his credit, 9 of them majors and three of those were at the Masters.

According to Wikipedia, Player has several nicknames, one of which is “International Ambassador of Golf”. During the interview, in response to a question, Player said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that there is no such thing as free speech anymore. The only free speech is politically correct speech.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, the game of golf and many other sports are often the target of the PC crowd. A case in point is an op-ed piece that appeared in the liberal British publication The Guardian some time back entitled “I’m sorry to widen the golf gulf, but I still want answers from Gary Player” taking him to task for, among other things, building a golf course in Myanmar. Here’s how the op-ed piece begins, “Most human differences can be overcome, but there is one unbridgeable divide. The world is split between people who play golf and people who don’t. Each faction regards the other as an alien life form”.

Now I realize that the author, George Monbiot was trying to be “tongue in cheek”, and maybe I’m not properly appreciating British humor, but I think its illustrative of how the PC crowd views those that are different from themselves. Monbiot wrote a book called “The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain”. Quite a title. As for golf, I think Mr. Monbiot is projecting his own values onto others, something that defines “Political Correctness”. I know a lot of golfers, but I don’t know any that view non-golfers as an alien life form. On the contrary, it’s the PC crowd that has become increasingly authoritarian and intolerant.

It wasn’t always so. Very recently we lost Merle Haggard, who had just turned 79, who made “political un-correctness” an art — after all he was a country music star. Country music, like golf, is another favorite target of the PC crowd.

One of Haggard’s enduring classics is a song he co-wrote with Roy Burris in 1969 called “Okie from Muscogee”. Burris was his drummer. According to the lyrics, Muscogee Oklahoma was “a place where even squares could have a ball”. Other lines include, “we don’t wear our hair all long and shaggy, like the hippies down in San Francisco do”, and “leather boots are still in style for manly footwear, beads and Roman sandals won’t be seen”, “the kids here still respect the college dean” and “we still wave Old Glory down at the court house”…..

In other words the song celebrated that lifestyle that the so-called 1960s counter culture rebelled against. And yet, “San Francisco hippies” like the Grateful Dead used to perform the song live in concert as well as other Merle Haggard songs such as “Mama Tried” - a song they also recorded. In 1971, another California band, The Beach Boys performed Okie From Muscogee in concert in Central Park in Manhattan in the heart of New York City. How’s that for a three minute cultural convergence event? A California surfing band performing Okie From Muscogee (Oklahoma) in New York City’s Central Park. Track down the video on YouTube - the New York City audience absolutely loved it. This kind of cultural convergence is rare - especially these days. In today’s world, to repeat Monbiot, “Each faction regards the other as an alien life form”.

Haggard incorporated into his lyrics ideas that are not only not PC, but were unique and even revolutionary. From 1982’s “Are the Good Times Really Over” he writes, “I wish a buck was still silver. It was back when the country was strong”. He understood that bad monetary policy and unsound money were root causes of economic decline for working people. Five years earlier he recorded, “A Working Man Can’t Make it Anymore”. Later in life he recorded “Where Did America Go?” His last single was a collaboration with Willie Nelson that perhaps answered that question called “It’s All Going to Pot”.

Perhaps because the popularity of Okie from Muscogee among the hippie contingent, Haggard remained a lightning rod for the PC crowd. Until the end, they still would flock to him to get his opinions. It was as if they were saying, “you see, I’m not bigoted or narrow minded, I interviewed Merle Haggard”.

In 2009, Randy Lewis interviewed Haggard for the Los Angeles Times, following the inauguration of President Obama. Said Lewis, “even though Haggard says he didn’t vote for Obama”, he wrote a song called “Hopes Are High” that “celebrates the arrival of a new era for the country in exceedingly optimistic tones”. Rolling Stone interviewed Haggard last year, and essentially they got an update on his opinion of Obama. He was quoted as saying that Obama was “very humble about being the President of the United States” but added, “I think he knows he’s in over his head. Anybody with any sense who takes that job and thinks they can handle it must be an idiot.”

Back in 2005, Merle Haggard made a guest appearance on Gretchen Wilson’s recording called “Politically Uncorrect”. The following year, in an interview in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, Haggard said of politics, “I suddenly turned my back on it because I do not believe in the politics of America, I believe they’re corrupt and I believe there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.” Wow.

Gary Player, the golfer who says that free speech has been replaced by politically correct speech continues to work - he refuses to retire. In the song “Big City”, Merle Haggard sang, “you can keep your retirement and your so-called Social Security, big city turn me loose and set me free”. He worked right up until the end. He was supposed to appear next month at the Hollywood Casino in Charles Town but sadly that isn’t going to happen. I’ll miss Merle Haggard. Now that he’s gone the PC crowd will be Moving On and I feel confident that they probably won’t be paying Gary Player any mind.