RIP Molly Ivins

[The Hegemo]

Molly Ivins, whose biting columns mixed liberal populism with an irreverent Texas wit, died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at her home in Austin after an up-and-down battle with breast cancer she had waged for seven years. She was 62.

Ms. Ivins, the Star-Telegram's political columnist for nine years ending in 2001, had written for the New York Times, the Dallas Times-Herald and Time magazine and had long been a sought-after pundit on the television talk-show circuit to provide a Texas slant on issues ranging from President Bush’s pedigree to the culture wars rooted in the 1960s.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/16591107.htm

[Breeze]

RIP, indeed. I always enjoyed her columns.

[twentyshots]

crap. that sucks.

[epeolatry]

i saw this in Shiv's blog, then posted my own RIP to Molly Ivins. I met her when I was a freshman journalism major at OU (1995! so long ago). She did a big speech/book signing. I got my book signed, and then later wrote her a letter about what an inspiration she was as a progressive, intelligent woman. She actually wrote me back (or signed what someone else wrote back), and i still have that letter somewhere in a box of important stuff.

RIP--thank you for trying to fight the good fight.

[Marlowe]

molly ivans is one of the few liberal writers i can stand. she actually has a good sense of humor and speaks with a gleam in her eye and comes across as very likable. most of what passes for humorous liberal writing these days is caustic and full of invective, and consequently, is much less effective.

she was a very smart woman who enjoyed a good laugh, didn't take herself or anything else too seriously, and would knock back a few drinks with you. her unique take on the world will be missed.

[tinnitus]

damn, this sucks. At least she lived long enough to see the dems take control of congress again. Thanks for everything, RIP Ms. Ivins.

[REMgirl]

I started reading her columns and books years ago, and I always thought she was level-headed and smart, but I especially loved her humorous needling. She knew how to skewer the wrongdoers and she never gave up. Even during her last days, she admonished her followers to keep up the good fight.

RIP, and thanks, Molly.

[the_birds]

She was a real Texas firebrand Liberal. She'll be missed way more than she could ever imagine. She was just a little too cynical for me, personally, but I understood her. Her message was way more important than being a little too cynical.

[REMgirl]

I just read part of a tribute to Molly, written by her editor:

"Molly's work was truly her passion. She would regularly turn down lucrative speaking engagements to give rally-the-troops speeches at liberalism's loneliest outposts. And when she did rub elbows with the highfalutin' well-to-do, the encounter would invariably end up as comedic grist in future columns. For a woman who made a profession of offering her opinion to others, Molly was remarkably humble. She was known for hosting unforgettable parties at her Austin home, which would feature rollicking political discussions, and impromptu poetry recitals and satirical songs. At one such event, I noticed her dining table was littered with various awards and distinguished speaker plaques, put to use as trivets for steaming plates of tamales, chili and fajita meat. When I called this to her attention, Molly matter-of-factly replied, "Well, what else am I going to do with 'em?"

I'm going to miss her.

[loveydovey]

Very sad news. As you'd expect, this was on the front page everywhere in Austin today. Several of the profs here in the journalism dept knew her personally, and she was here to speak in November. I missed it because I was out of town working on a story (which is probably the only good excuse for missing it, I guess.)

If you look at the Texas Observer site, there's a list of tributes you can read, and the one from President Bush is faithfully labeled "Shrub." :p

[Sushi]

She was one of a kind. Really an inspiration as a forward thinking human, as a journalist, as a female, and as a forward-thinking female journalist. I liked her work very much.

Epeolatry--very envious you had the opportunity to meet her.

[Sushi]

Nice editorial in today's NYTimes on the passing of Molly Ivins, Ann Richards and Nellie Connally--a "certain kind" of Texas woman.

The New York Times, February 3, 2007
Lone Starlets
By MIMI SWARTZ


THE last few months have provided hard times for iconic Texas women and the Texans — and others — who worshipped them. Last September, we lost both a former governor, Ann Richards, and a former state first lady, Nellie Connally. When the columnist Molly Ivins died on Wednesday, it seemed that a certain kind of Texas woman might be gone forever.

If you’ve read the obituaries, you know the type: the funny, brave, irreverent kind, who spoke out against a life in a (supposedly) brutal, backward state. It was Ms. Richards who insisted that the elder President Bush was born with a “silver foot in his mouth,” and Ms. Ivins who insisted that the younger one had rightfully earned the nickname of “Shrub.” Mrs. Connally, less well known outside the state, was almost as funny and probably more beloved here, because she delivered her barbs in private.

As befits most icons, all of these women went by their first names among people who didn’t know them. They will be remembered for their strength and their wit, but what stays with me even more is their fragility and their anger. I wrote about them all over the years, and with each of their deaths I found myself thinking, amid the tributes, that being a Texas icon of the female variety probably wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

You can make the case that fury goes with the territory here. The male-dominated, rough-and-tumble Texas these women grew up in wasn’t hospitable to ladies in smarty pants; all three had to come up with novel ways to satisfy their needs and ambitions in a circumscribed world.

Ms. Ivins and Ms. Richards in particular were very interested in bringing about social change; the relationship between the state as a whole and the liberal coterie of which they were an integral part is one of the great, doomed romances of Texas history. Mrs. Connally was far from a liberal Democrat — her husband, Gov. John Connally, famously jumped from the Democratic Party to the Republicans — but she, too, triumphed over a youthful shyness to serve as her spouse’s most undying loyalist, whether he was pushing for school reform in Texas or, later, trying to escape scandal in Washington.

In other words, rather than flee the state for friendlier waters, all three far preferred to stay and swim upstream. All three, in fact, felt a deep obligation to their home state: it energized them as it defined them — favorably — to the outside world, which always felt better when it could look down on Texas.

Nellie Connally had little choice but to play the part of the gracious, loving wife; there wasn’t much else a woman of her generation could do (she was 87 when she died). She was a former beauty queen who married a true prince of Texas and became a very popular first lady. Yet when I last interviewed her in 2003 she was living in a two-bedroom apartment overflowing with memorabilia, waiting each day to have her two allotted drinks with Dan Rather at 5:30. She had attentive children and grandchildren, but she had by then lost a daughter to suicide, struggled with breast cancer, and endured her husband’s very public bankruptcy.

And, of course, after the deaths of her husband in 1993 and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis the next year, she alone lived to tell the tale of what happened in President John F. Kennedy’s car on Nov. 22, 1963. I heard her describe it three times to three different audiences during the course of a few weeks. (It was Nellie, ever smoothing things over, who said, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” just before the shots were fired.) As horrible as that memory was, it kept her tied to history, and, more important, to the love of her life — a man who suffered from such profound arrogance and vanity that his personality has come to overshadow his many accomplishments.

When you saw Ann Richards’s weathered face you knew just what 73 years of life had cost her. Sure, she had given herself over to the harsh Texas sun on too many outings; but, like Nellie Connally, there had been other costs: she, too, had played geisha, not to an ambitious husband but to a group of ambitious Texas liberals. It was Ms. Richards who had planned the drunken, irreverent costume parties — memories of the time are hazy, but she once went, or dressed a friend up, as a tampon. Then she got up next morning to pack the children’s lunches.

She did it all, pretty near perfectly for a while: a beautiful young woman of supreme competency with a tart tongue and ambitions far beyond the P.T.A. Triumphing over all that — as well as smoking, drinking and divorce — formed part of her campaign story when she ran for governor in 1990, and made her victory all the sweeter.

But her pain, smoothed over in folksy public speeches and slick campaign commercials, could catch you up short: when I traveled with her during her first gubernatorial campaign I marveled at how trussed up and hostile she was, how her coterie of female supporters were protective to a fault, trying to shield her from criticism. In the end, she lost her taste for the fight, and essentially ceded the 1994 gubernatorial election to George W. Bush.

Being a decade younger than her friend Ann Richards, Molly Ivins never had to serve as anyone’s geisha, and she never would have. But she was a big, smart, ungainly girl in a state where a female could suffer something close to capital punishment for those crimes; in self-defense she turned the cracker vernacular on the crackers and won fame for herself in the process, playing the Professional Texan. (Those hacks in the Legislature wouldn’t have given a Smith graduate from ritzy River Oaks the time of day, but a hard-drinking, foul-talking, big-boned country girl? Well, that worked.)

But in private, Ms. Ivins, too, battled alcohol, and had her coterie of human shields; they were protecting a woman whose loneliness was as incomprehensible as it was omnipresent. She was a performer who rarely allowed herself to be offstage, which, of course, ensured that the majority of us kept our distance.

There aren’t so many iconic women left in Texas, now — Lady Bird Johnson and the oil baroness Lynn Wyatt come to mind — but maybe that’s to the good. We don’t have to fight so hard to be heard, or noticed, or to avoid being taken for a hick. It’s easier for us, but for everyone who knew them, maybe, not quite as much fun.

Mimi Swartz is an executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine.

[greengirl]

molly was so funny and smart. i always loved reading what she had to say. my boss used to email me her articles at work and then we'd spend hours discussing politics. i'll miss that.

epeolatry-so cool you got to meet her!

sushi-thanks for posting that article.

[spackler]

Since she started her career in Minneapolis, there have been a few anecdotes, and I love this one:

"... a cops reporter at the old Minneapolis Tribune. She so distinguished herself, in a manner of speaking, that the police named their mascot pig after her -- an "honor" she bore with considerable pride."

Somehow she could write about something so sad, maddening or frustrating and still make you laugh.

[REMgirl]

Great article, Sushi!

Here are some of her more famous quotes:

• One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't waste a lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either. OK, so it's not that bad yet -- but it's getting that bad.

• Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government is on the high road to permanent glory.

• During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: "Look out! They're about to smack you around again!"

• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

• I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot of land that's good for nothing but grazing.

• The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.

• In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's] office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.

• Good thing we've still got politics in Texas -- finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

• [on Texas politics] Better than the zoo; Better than the circus.

• I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

• Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?

Oh, it's just that your life is at stake.

• ...Phil Gramm, the senator from Enron...

• ...you could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.

• Say, here's an item: A group of right-wing journalists famed for their impartiality has set themselves up as the Patriotism Police. No less distinguished a crowd than Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, The New York Post editorial page and the Fox News Channel -- quite a bunch of Pulitzer winners there -- are now passing judgment on whether media outlets that do actual reporting are sufficiently one-sided for their taste.

• I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.

• If he gets even more sedate, we will have to water him twice a week. [Molly Ivins about then-President Ronald Reagan]

• If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin' rights on that man's head. [Molly Ivins on Dick Armey]

We'll miss you, Molly!

[Sushi]

My personal favorite: Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.

[REMgirl]

And was she the one who said, "Bush was born on third base, but thinks he hit a triple?" :p