Happy Trails II … as promised

The pen is mightier than the sword, they say — sure, a sword can cut your heart out … but words can fill it up, inspire it, illuminate it … travel up to the brain and stimulate thought, create options other than brute force. Maybe that’s Dubby’s problem … he doesn’t do “words” any better than he does “reason.”

Molly Ivin’s knew that, and she knew how to slice and dice in a much friendlier manner than the, now, reigning queen of snark, Mo Dowd. There was nothing mean about Molly. We may enjoy what Mo writes, but we won’t love her. That was Molly’s gift.

I read recently that funny women are percieved as “threatening” — I’ll testify. Ergo, a funny political woman is a “ball buster.” Interesting, isn’t it, that there are more women on the planet than men [China discounted, idiots] and we still use male apparatus to describe a can-do gal?

It’s no surprise that almost every tribute that’s been written about Miss Molly is full of her quotes … funny, biting, true and empassioned thoughts. You’ll find an impressive collection, below. Words are her legacy — powerful words … I think that would please her.

And just as populism begins its ascent — the genuine article has left us. Me, I can’t bare the thought that this will be the last time we talk about her, the last time we enjoy the wit and bite of her mind. Closing in on 6000 posts as your moderator, I’ve included 159 of Molly’s articles in these last four years.

So, today, I’m trading out the Political Waves signature for one of Molly’s quotes — I’ve only done that once before, replacing a quote from the Dali Llama with one by Bill Moyers.

Here it is —

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”

~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

Some of the Big Dogs give tribute to the little gal from Texas, below [I'm not including the one by Dubby, which would probably amuse this Austin Firecracker.] Moyers, Scheer, Rothschild … then a collection of words — biting, powerful and funny words. One of her last interviews, at the end.

Jude

Remembering Molly
Bill Moyers
Friday, February 2, 2007 by the Texas Observer

What a foot-stompin’ reunion there must be at this very moment in that great Purgatory of Journalists in the Sky. I can see them now—Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Upton Sinclair, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Ida B. Wells, David Graham Phillips, George Seldes, I. F. Stone, Walter Karp, Willie Morris—welcoming our darlin’ to their bosoms.

Oh, my, how she comes trailing clouds of truth-telling glory! Look at her—big-hearted as ever, leaning over the balustrade and reaching down to the tormented of Hades, moistening Tom DeLay’s lips, patting down Bob Perry’s hair, erasing George W’s sandstone scribblings. In the celestial light she glows as irrepressibly and vividly as she did here on Earth, where she made the mighty humble, the wicked ashamed, and the good ol’ boys reach for the barrel to hide their forlorn nakedness. And, oh, the stories she must be telling as we speak.

At a PBS meeting a few years ago, she ended her talk with a joke that would have gotten anyone else arrested or excommunicated. But she was carried out on the crowd’s shoulders, as right now she is being ushered into the Council of Ink-Stained Immortals, where the only religion is truth. Save some room up there, Molly: You have inspired us earthbound wretches to keep trying to live up to your legacy in the hope of joining you there one day. ++

A Tribute to Molly
An Irreplaceable Voice
Robert Scheer, TruthDig
Jan 31, 2007

The Molly Ivins that I can’t square with the news of her death was a sparkling diamond of a woman, ready with the quick laugh, who would never let the bastards get her down. That went for the good old boys in her beloved Texas, the state of the president they sent to Washington—and even for the cancer cells that long had been attempting to end her life.

I wish I had a transcript so I could quote from a comedic standup bit that Molly did on a Nation magazine cruise where she recounted her attempt to find a breast prosthesis in Paris to replace the one that she somehow misplaced in packing. Just as she was energized from fighting the good fight against politicians eager to do us in, she turned her illness into an affirmation of the wonder and joy of life.

As a columnist, she was the best of our time, piercingly insightful without being mean-spirited or petty. Her pen was scalpel-sharp, excising malignancy, but guided always by a generous spirit inviting even those with whom she took fierce issue to come to their senses and help us to heal.

Because of her homespun sophistication and never-preachy but ever-profound moral concern, Molly’s columns that we were privileged to print on our Truthdig website were always the most popular with readers.

Please, Molly, forgive the sentiment that you would have dismissed as mushy had I uttered it in your presence: Your voice is irreplaceable, you were deeply loved by many, and the scourge only of those who merited it. Read Molly Ivins’ final column: “Stand Up Against the ‘Surge’ ”

Goodbye, Molly I.
Anthony Zurcher, TruthDig

Molly Ivins is gone, and her words will never grace these pages again—for this, we will mourn. But Molly wasn’t the type of woman who would want us to grieve. More likely, she’d say something like “Hang in there, keep fightin’ for freedom, raise more hell, and don’t forget to laugh, too.”

If there was one thing Molly wanted us to understand, it’s that the world of politics is absurd. Since we can’t cry, we might as well laugh. And in case we ever forgot, Molly would remind us, several times a week, in her own unique style.

Shortly after becoming editor of Molly Ivins’ syndicated column, I learned that one of my most important jobs was to tell her newspaper clients that, yes, Molly meant to write it that way. We called her linguistic peculiarities “Molly-isms.” Administration officials were “Bushies,” government was in fact spelled “guvment,” business was “bidness.” And if someone was “madder than a peach orchard boar,” well, he was quite mad indeed.

Of course, having grown up in Texas, all of this made sense to me. But to newspaper editors in Seattle, Chicago, Detroit and beyond—Yankee land, as Molly would say—her folksy language could be a mystery. “That’s just Molly being Molly,” I would explain and leave it at that.

But there was more to Molly Ivins than insightful political commentary packaged in an aw-shucks Southern charm. In the coming days, much will be made of Molly’s contributions to the liberal cause, how important she was as an authentic female voice on opinion pages across the country, her passionate and eloquent defense of the poorest and the weakest among us against the corruption of the most powerful, and the joy she took in celebrating the uniqueness of American culture—and all of this is true. But more than that, Molly Ivins was a woman who loved and cared deeply for the world around her. And her warm and generous spirit was apparent in all her words and deeds.

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 invariable 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?”

Perhaps the most astounding aspect of Molly’s life is the love she engendered from her legions of fans. If Molly missed a column for any reason, her newspapers would hear about it the next day. As word of Molly’s illness spread, letters, cards, e-mails and gifts poured in.

Even as Molly fought her last battle with cancer, she continued to make public appearances. When she was too weak to write, she dictated her final two columns.

Although her body was failing, she still had so much to say. Last fall, before an audience at the University of Texas, her voice began as barely a whisper. But as she went on, she drew strength from the standing-room-only crowd until, at the end of the hour, she was forcefully imploring the students to get involved and make a difference. As Molly once wrote, “Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don’t much care for.”

For me, Molly’s greatest words of wisdom came with three children’s books she gave my son when he was born. In her inimitable way, she captured the spirit of each in one-sentence inscriptions. In “Alice in Wonderland,” she offered, “Here’s to six impossible things before breakfast.” For “The Wind in the Willows,” it was, “May you have Toad’s zest for life.” And in “The Little Prince,” she wrote, “May your heart always see clearly.”

Like the Little Prince, Molly Ivins has left us for a journey of her own. But while she was here, her heart never failed to see clear and true—and for that, we can all be grateful. ++

Molly Ivins, In Memoriam
Matthew Rothschild
Thursday, February 1, 2007 by The Progressive

“Hey Rothschild, you owe me a Heineken!” That’s what Molly yelled at me over the din at the Café Montmartre in Madison a few years back.

We were having a little fundraiser for The Progressive, and Molly had come free of charge, of course. Swarmed by fans after she spoke, she needed to wet her whistle, which she liked to do more than once in a while.

She believed in the power of laughter. She knew it could keep you from getting depressed or burning out. And she knew it could deflate the abusers of power.

She had just finished telling one of her favorite stories (which we published in August 1993) about the Texas state legislator who introduced a bill banning sodomy, both homosexual and heterosexual, in the Great State, as she always called Texas. When this legislator succeeded in passing the bill with the help of an ally, the two men shook hands in celebration. “Whereupon, the Speaker had to send the sergeant-at-arms over to reprimand them both,” Molly said, “because under the new law, ‘it’s illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in the state.’ ”

She loved to be naughty. For a while there, I thought the main reason she wrote for The Progressive was because we let her swear. But there were others: She knew we needed humor to lighten up our pages, and that our readers needed humor to lighten up their lives.

She believed in the power of laughter. She knew it could keep you from getting depressed or burning out. And she knew it could deflate the abusers of power.

Of the Reagan Administration, she said, “Half of it was under average—the other half was under indictment.”

Of Pat Buchanan’s culture war speech at the 1992 Republican convention, she said, “It read better in the original German.”

For twenty years, Molly wrote for The Progressive, and over the last fifteen, her monthly column provided the frosting on the last page.

She was, far and away, the reader’s favorite. Even my sister told me she read Molly first.

She was the favorite not only because of her humor and her style. She was the favorite because she never lost hope in the promise of America.

She often described herself as “ever optimistic to the point of lunacy.” She had faith in the people. She understood how messed up our democracy was, how in hock to the wealthy and the corporate, and so she championed campaign finance reform. She promoted egalitarianism. As Robert La Follette used to say, “The solution to the problems of democracy is more democracy.” Molly believed that.

And she was a fighter, to the end.

Somehow, even as the cancer was taking its terminal toll, she managed just a few weeks ago to summon the energy to crank out a couple of syndicated columns on the Iraq War. She was doing more than her part to stop Bush’s craziness, and she was urging all of us to do ours.

To Jim Hightower, to Lou Dubose, to her colleagues at her beloved Texas Observer, and especially to Betsy Moon, her right-hand woman, I send my deepest condolences.

I also want to thank all the Progressive subscribers who sent notes to Molly over the last several weeks. She appreciated that. “I’m overwhelmed by the kindness of you progressives, who have comforted me with your cards,” she said. “While I’m not able to get back to each and every one of you, please know that you’ve brought me cheer. On we fight!”

Molly, you brought us all cheer, month in and month out. And we will fight on.

I owe you a Heineken—and a whole lot more. ++

Molly Ivins, In Her Own Words
Here are some excerpts from Molly’s columns for The Progressive over the last dozen years.

Jan. 1995: Self-description

“I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a program. I’m not a communist or a socialist. I guess I’m a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible.”

March 1995: How to survive Newt Gingrich

“Ah, my friends, rejoice. These are frabjous days. Our nation survived eight years of Ronald Reagan as President. We can survive this, too. We can even laugh. All it takes is a strong stomach.”

October 1995: Deregulation

“When last we left that merry band of Republican brothers in Congress, they were deregulating shit on beef.”

March 1998: On Clinton’s sex scandal

“I do not believe the President’s sex life is any of our business. After thirty years of political reporting, I have been unable to establish a link between marital fidelity and high performance in public office. It really doesn’t matter who they screw in private, as long as they don’t screw the public.”

May 1998: On Clinton’s sex scandal

“With all due respect to the President’s private parts, we do have bigger problems in this country.”

June 1998: Failure of Democracy

“One reason I really like living in a democracy is that the citizens get what they want. I know you’ve all noticed the widespread grassroots movement surging with people rallying behind banners that say, ‘We want banks and stockbrokers to merge,’ ‘We love this system of campaign financing,’ ‘We want dirtier air and dirtier water,’ ‘We demand tax breaks for the rich,’ ‘We want fewer services for the rest of us,’ ‘Don’t fix our schools,’ ‘More downsizing,’ and ‘Tax breaks for corporations moving to Mexico.’

Feb 2000: Cancer

“On a personal note: I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I intend to recover. I don’t need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done.”

October 2000: Cancer

“I just finished with nine months of treatment for cancer. First they poison you, then they mutilate you, then they burn you. I’ve had more fun. And when it’s over, you’re so glad that you’re grateful to absolutely everyone. And I am. The trouble is, I’m not a better person. I was in great hopes that confronting my own mortality would make me deeper, more thoughtful. Many lovely people sent books on how to find a more spiritual meaning in life. My response was, ‘Oh, hell, I can’t go on a spiritual journey—I’m constipated.”

Jan. 2001: Stolen election

“These Gore people have no idea how to steal an election. What happened to the Democrats? They used to have some skill at this.”

April 2001: Inequality

“Sunday-morning chatter announced in horror: ‘People may think the rich can buy their way out of the justice system.’ No shit. Been going to Texas prisons for a long time. Seen nobody rich on Death Row yet. . . . Wake me when impending egalitarianism is a problem. In the meantime, oligarchy is eating our ass, our dreams, our country, our heritage, our democracy, our justice, and our tax code.”

June 2001: A Rule for Bush

“I’ve been trying to find the depths in Bush’s shallow. . . . Maybe we should add a rule that we can’t invade any country the President can’t pronounce.”

Nov. 2001: 9/11

“My worry is that Bush is painting himself into a corner with his rhetoric. This is not a war; it’s a gigantic police operation in the face of a crime beyond all understanding. . . .

Back home in Texas, and the sign outside our neighborhood strip joint says, “Hot Babes, Cold Beer, Nuke ‘Em, GW.’ ”

Dec. 2001: Bush No Giant Among Men

“Despite frequent reports from patriotic news media, I am unpersuaded that since September 11, George W. Bush has become a giant among men. . . . A year ago, he couldn’t tell the Grecians from the Timorians, and now he’s stuck with the mother of all foreign policy crises. . . . I’m praying for him. Mostly what I pray is, ‘Dear Lord, please don’t let Dubya screw this one up.’ ”

Dec. 2001: Foolish Military Strategy

“It’s hard to convince people you are bombing that you’re doing it for their own good.”

March 2002: Enron

“Enron is the gift that keeps on giving. Yes, there is joy in Mudville. Wallow away.”

Sept. 2002: Bush’s Cronyism

“Bush is the mascot of crony capitalism.”

Dec. 2002: Fight Harder

“There are three things one must not do in the face of electoral disaster. Whine. Despair. Or fall for that specious old radical crap: ‘Things have to get worse before they can get better.’ The only possible response to that one is, ‘Not with my child’s life.’ Nor is it helpful to sit around hoping that given enough rope, the R’s will hang themselves.

They’ll hang us along with them. The only thing to do is to fight harder and smarter.”

Jan. 2003: Corporations Cash In

“You have to admit: The corporations are getting prompt service from Republicans in return for their donations.”

April 2003: The Peace Movement

“Well, beloveds, it looks like war. I want to talk to all of you who tried to stop this. You did not fight in vain.”

May 2003: The Myth of the Coalition

“So constant is the reiteration of the words ‘coalition,’ ‘coalition forces,’ and ‘coalition position’ that you might assume one actually exists. . . . Eritrea and Ethiopia do not a coalition make.”

June 2003: Iraq

“We knew going in this was going to be the peace from hell, and so far the Administration has made every misstep possible.”

October 2003: Iraq

“I have a suggestion for a withdrawal deadline: Let’s leave Iraq before we’ve killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein did.”

November 2003: “Call Me a Bush-Hater”

Robert Novak and Charles Krauthammer both claim to have “never seen anything like the detestation of Bush. . . . Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to—our last President. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I also notice they haven’t let up yet. . . . ‘The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from,’ mused the ineffable Krauthammer. Gosh, what a puzzle that is. How could anyone not be just crazy about George W. Bush?”

January 2004: On the Internet and Politics

“I realize this is not breaking news, but we are looking at something exceptional in political history with this race. . . . The Internet is breaking open old power structures and set ways of doing things. Most campaign consultants have no idea what do with it or about it. How delightful.”

March 2004: Bush “Not Bright Enough”

“Being curious, taking an interest in other cultures, and enjoying travel were all characteristics of Bill Clinton. . . . Bush pretty much embodies the reverse. . . . He’s not bright enough to be President. . . . He neither reads, nor writes, nor speaks well. It turns out that a C average is not good enough for the Presidency.”

June 2004: Iraq

“No one can spin away a mess as big as Iraq. Recognizing reality may not solve a problem. but it has to be the start of any solution.”

September 2004: Bush and God

“Then there’s Bush’s slightly alarming claim to the Amish on July 9 that God speaks through him. That’s what he said, God speaks through him. This raises some troubling prospects. First of all, I think God has a better grasp of subject-verb agreement than George W. Bush do. Also, when Bush changes his mind, as he frequently does, do we conclude that God had to rethink things after the polls came out?”

December 2004: After Bush’s reelection

“I can think of nothing more likely to convince the people not to vote for Republicans again for a long, long time than four more years of George W. Bush. . . . Of course we’ll laugh again, progressives. But I am into action now. So let’s have at ‘em.”

March 2005: To the Barricades

“Friends, soulwise, these are trying times. Now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of our country, and it won’t help if you all cower in places like Madison and the Upper West Side, having hot fantods over the approach of fascism. To the barricades, team. And for Lord’s sake, don’t leave your sense of humor behind.”

June 2005: Tom DeLay

“The guy smells like a slop jar.”

August 2005: The Downing Street Memos and the Media

“When I read the first Downing Street Memo, my eyes bugged out and my jaw fell open. It was news to me. [… But] The New York Times and The Washington Post have both gone way out of their way to deny that the Downing Street Memos (it’s now plural) are news. . . . I don’t know if these memos represent an impeachable offense, but they strike me as a hell of a lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Shit, I’d settle for that again over what we’re looking at now.”

October 2005: Katrina

“This is a column for everyone who ever said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in politics,’ or, ‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’ or, ‘Hey, they’re all crooks anyway.’ . . . I’ve got one word for all of you: Katrina. . . . This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.”

January 2006: Bush Is Done

“You can stick a fork in Bush, he’s done. It’s all over except for the next three years, and if that doesn’t scare the bejeezus out of you, you haven’t got a lick of sense.”

February 2006: Impeachment?

“Uh-oh. Excuse me. I’m so sorry, but we are having an honest-to-goodness constitutional crisis as the Testy Kid violates his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country. The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the President and he considers that sufficient justification.

. . . Either the President of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached.”

March 2006: “Enough of the DC Dems”

“I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the DC Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

June 2006: Immigration

“The Fence will not work. No fence will work. The Great darn Wall of China will not work. Undocumented immigrants will come anyway. Over, under, or through. Anyone who says a fence can fix this problem is a demagogue and an ass.”

July 2006: Campaign finance

“Either we figure out how to keep corporate cash out of the political system, or we lose the democracy.”

August 2006: Republican corruption

“The Republican Party seems to have lost its moral compass ever since Tom DeLay quit.”

December 2006: Iraq and the press

“The self-important chattering class of Washington insists that you only have credibility as a critic of the war if you were for it in the first place. I’m missing a logical link there.”

January 2007: Populists and liberals

“Listen, a populist is someone who is for the people and against the powerful, and so a populist is generally the same as a liberal—except we tend to have more fun.”

Final column: Iraq

“Every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them, and that’s why we’re trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets. Bang pots and pans. Demand, ‘Stop it, now!’ ” ++

Remembering Molly Ivins
John Nichols, The Nation
Wednesday 31 January 2007

Molly Ivins always said she wanted to write a book about the lonely experience of East Texas civil rights campaigners to be titled No One Famous Ever Came. While the television screens and newspapers told the stories of the marches, the legal battles and the victories of campaigns against segregation in Alabama and Mississippi, Ivins recalled, the foes of Jim Crow laws in the region where she came of age in the 1950s and ’60s often labored in obscurity without any hope that they would be joined on the picket lines by Nobel Peace Prize winners, folk singers, Hollywood stars or senators.

And Ivins loved those righteous strugglers all the more for their willingness to carry on.

The warmest-hearted populist ever to pick up a pen with the purpose of calling the rabble to the battlements, Ivins understood that change came only when some citizen in some off-the-map town passed a petition, called a Congressman or cast an angry vote to throw the bums out. The nation’s mostly widely syndicated progressive columnist, who died January 31 at age 62 after a long battle with what she referred to as a “scorching case of cancer,” adored the activists she celebrated from the time in the late 1960s when she created her own “Movements for Social Change” beat at the old Minneapolis Tribune and started making heroes of “militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers.”

“Troublemaker” might be a term of derision in the lexicon of some journalists - particularly the on-bended-knee White House press pack that Ivins studiously refused to run with - but to Molly it was a term of endearment. If anyone anywhere was picking a fight with the powerful, she was writing them up with the same passionate language she employed when her friend the great Texas liberal Billie Carr passed on in 2002. Ivins recalled Carr “was there for the workers and the unions, she was there for the African-Americans, she was there for the Hispanics, she was there for the women, she was there for the gays. And this wasn’t all high-minded, oh, we-should-all-be-kinder-to-one-another. This was tough, down, gritty, political trench warfare; money against people. She bullied her way to the table of power, and then she used that place to get everybody else there, too. If you ain’t ready to sweat, and you ain’t smart enough to deal, you can’t play in her league.”

Molly Ivins could have played in the league of the big boys. They invited her in, giving her a bureau chief job with the New York Times - which she wrote her way out of when she referred to a “community chicken-killing festival” in a small town as a “gang-pluck.” Leaving the Times in 1982 was the best thing that ever happened to Molly. She settled back in her home state of Texas, where her friend Jim Hightower was about to get elected as agricultural commissioner and another friend named Ann Richards was striding toward the governorship. As a newspaper columnist for the old Dallas Times Herald - and, after that paper’s demise, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Molly began writing a political column drenched in the good humor and fighting spirit of that populist moment. It appealed beyond Texas, and within a decade she was writing for 400 papers nationwide.

As it happened, the populist fires faded in Texas, and the state started spewing out the byproducts of an uglier political tradition - the oil-money plutocracy - in the form of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

It mattered, a lot, that Molly was writing for papers around the country during the Bush interregnum. She explained to disbelieving Minnesotans and Mainers that, yes, these men really were as mean, as self-serving and as delusional as they seemed. The book that Molly and her pal Lou Dubose wrote about their homeboy-in-chief, Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (Random House, 2000), was the essential expos of the man the Supreme Court elected President. And Ivins’s columns tore away any pretense of civility or citizenship erected by the likes of Karl Rove.

When Washington pundits started counseling bipartisanship after voters routed the Republicans in the 2006 elections, Molly wrote, “The sheer pleasure of getting lessons in etiquette from Karl Rove and the right-wing media passeth all understanding. Ever since 1994, the Republican Party has gone after Democrats with the frenzy of a foaming mad dog. There was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, not to mention the trashing of both Clinton and his wife - accused of everything from selling drugs to murder - all orchestrated by that paragon of manners, Tom DeLay…. So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners.

“Given Bush’s record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face,” Ivins continued, in a column that warned any Democrat who might think to make nice with President and his team that “These people are not only dishonest - they’re not even smart.”

Her readers cheered that November 9, 2006, column, as they did everything Molly wrote. And the cheers came loudest from those distant corners of Kansas and Mississippi where, often, her words were the only dissents that appeared in the local papers during the long period of diminished discourse following 9/11. For the liberal faithful in Boise and Biloxi and Beaumont, she was a lifeline - telling them that, yes, Henry Kissinger was “an old war criminal,” that Bush had created a “an honest to goodness constitutional crisis” when it embarked on a program of warrantless wiretapping and that Bill Moyers should seek the presidency because “I want to vote for somebody who’s good and brave and who should win.” (The Moyers boomlet was our last co-conspiracy, and in Molly’s honor, I’m thinking of writing in his name on my Democratic primary ballot next year.)

For the people in the places where no one famous ever came, Molly Ivins arrived a couple of times a week in the form of columns that told the local rabble-rousers that they were the true patriots, that they damn well better keep pitching fits about the war and the Patriot Act and economic inequality, and that they should never apologize for defending “those highest and best American ideas” contained in the Bill of Rights.

Often, Molly actually did come - in all of her wisecracking, pot-stirring populist glory.

Keeping a promise she’d made when her old friend and fellow Texan John Henry Faulk was on his deathbed, Molly accepted a steady schedule of invites to speak for local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in dozens of communities, from Toledo to Sarasota to Medford, Oregon. Though she could have commanded five figures, she took no speaker’s fee. She just came and told the crowds to carry on for the Constitution. “I know that sludge-for-brains like Bill O’Reilly attack the ACLU for being ‘un-American,’ but when Bill O’Reilly’s constitutional rights are violated, the ACLU will stand up for him just like they did for Oliver North, Communists, the KKK, atheists, movement conservatives and everyone else they’ve defended over the years,” she told them. “The premise is easily understood: If the government can take away one person’s rights, it can take away everyone’s.”

She also told them, even when she was battling cancer and Karl Rove, that they should relish the lucky break of their consciences and their conflicts. Speaking truth to power is the best job in any democracy, she explained. It took her to towns across this great yet battered land to say: “So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.” ++

Forces of Nature
Jayne Lyn Stahl, HuffPo
02.01.2007

Last night, at her home in Austin, columnist and best-selling author, Molly Ivins, succumbed to her eight year battle with cancer at 62. If anyone could disarm death with humor and fire, I thought, Molly could. If anyone was unstoppable, it was Molly, she wouldn’t brake not even for terminal illness, I thought.

I’d like to say I knew Molly, but I didn’t. Yet, she wrote with the style, and intimacy that made everyone who read her feel as if she were a friend.

Right after learning of her death, I started to write something for my blog and, mid-way through, decided to stop and think instead about what Molly’s friend, Austin political cartoonist, Ben Sargent, said: “She was just like a force of nature.” I went to sleep with that image firmly planted in my mind, the image of a force greater even than destiny, or will, an energy field that celebrates itself through the electric dance of defiance. I was content to think, and say, only that.

Until I awoke this morning, and scanned the Web, only to find a post on a blog titled “We Are All Molly” for which I can only say no, no, we are not all Molly! We do not all have the gravitas, the spine, inimitable wit, and panache that registers 7.5 on the Richter scale of satire. We can’t all write “You Got To Dance With Them That Brung You.” Most of us wouldn’t dare to say half the things Molly did, when she said them, knowing just how close she was to the nexus of power, and what the consequences could be.

We can’t all say that we’re among the first of our gender to rise to the top in the newspaper business, to venture into largely male-dominated political commentary field, and to be the first woman to cover police activities for The Minneapolis Tribune. Some of us have to look up the phrase “glass ceiling” on Google; Molly Ivins didn’t. She knew what glass ceilling meant, first-hand. Most importantly, she didn’t play the “sex card,” and I’m not going to, either. Though she could more than hold her own with any of them, Molly didn’t want to be in the playpen with the big boys; she wanted to her game, by her rules, and that she won.

Indeed, we are not all Molly. We didn’t all graduate from the Columbia University journalism school back in the days when there were maybe a handful of women in her class. We weren’t all hired to be political writers by one of the three top newspapers, The New York Times, for several years during the 1970s. We couldn’t all write a book called Bushwhacked, and expect to have the president pay homage to us in the press when we pass. Even a president who shows no greater love for the press than he does for truth, openness, and justice paid tribute to one whose motto was “give them hell.”

Not even a fraction of those who call ourselves writers possess even an ounce of her uncanny sense of timing, determination, and passion.

Molly was one of two or three women columnists that people know, and read, in this country … which, in and of itself, makes her a force of nature. And, few of us possess the grace, heart and courage, in the last weeks of an eight year struggle with cancer, to think about inspiring those we leave behind to take to the streets with pots and pans to speak out against the two-bit euphemism this president calls a “surge.” “We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!’” Molly wrote in her column last month.

More people succumb to fear than cancer and, though cancer may have taken Molly, she never gave in to fear. She spoke from her heart, with the kind of passion, and fire that move those for whom the words truth and justice still resonate to express only awe.

While she didn’t make an issue of it, Molly worked hard to earn our respect, and she deserves nothing less. Better than anyone else I can think of, she showed how taking oneself seriously is the refuge of fools, yet she was, in the best sense of the word, one of the most serious, and significant political commentators of her times. There is only one Molly, she paid a high price to be who she was, and even the devil would surrender his seat to her.

So, while we may not all be Molly Ivins, we can all aspire to her moxie, and dogged determination to do what is right and, in doing so, best honor her memory. ++

Why Molly Ivins’ death is so sad
One reason of many…
Evan Derkacz, AlterNet
February 1, 2007.

Molly Ivins died yesterday after her third battle with breast cancer. She was 62.

There have, of course, been a number of columnists and writers able to clear the smoke of PR, reduce complex policy to its essence, and look to the future with clarity. But few did it with such relentless humor and hope — the things that make you want to do more than just go back to bed.

A teensy snippet from a 2003 commencement at the Columbia School of Journalism:

… The right wing nuts - with whom I have always lived in Texas - and if you are, by the way, feeling depressed about the state of the nation, the world and the possibilities of doing honest journalism in this country - I am here to cheer you up.

What you do, every morning when you wake up, thinking things are hard - is you say to yourself, thank God, I don’t have to do this in Texas. And, for those of you who wind up in Texas, call me, I’ll buy you some beer.
…

You may get fired, you may get in trouble. But, have fun, anyway, ’cause, as Willy Nelson sings, if we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane. So, as you all go forth unafraid, to raise hell and rock the boat, you just keep working at getting some laughter and some fun into the whole deal. Thank you. ++

The word on Molly
Evan Derkacz
Wed, Jan. 31, 2007

Here are some examples of the way Molly Ivins used the language, and the way others used the language to describe her:

On covering politics: “I believe politics is the finest form of entertainment in the state of Texas: better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball.”

On her own politics: “Yes, I’ve called myself a little-’d’ democrat. I am a populist, maybe even a left-wing Libertarian. It used to be if you didn’t have a hyphen in your definition, you clearly had not thought about it.”

On experience: “The longer I cover politics, the more I respect good compromises. I didn’t used to.”

Her way of paying a compliment: “He (Democrat Jim Mattox) was a wonderfully good attorney general. And somewhere underneath all that ruthless-pol, no-holds-barred fighter stuff there lurks a decent human being.”

Her views on President Bush, whom she had know since their high school days: “Although Bush rather promptly becomes defensive and prickly when questioned, he is by and large perfectly affable.”

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief on Ivins: “She has a really big heart and she really cares a lot about Texas. I don’t think anyone has escaped the wrath of her pen.”

Former state Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington: “When you’ve got a New York City mindset with a Texas twist, it’s really hard to get it right.”

Conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas: “She’s tough, she’s pugnacious, she makes us pay attention. I think she argues her position very well. Obviously, she is wrong all the time, but she’d say the same about me.” ++

Quotes and quips from Molly Ivins
Associated Press
Feb. 1, 2007

Molly Ivins
1944-2007

Some quotes from Molly Ivins, the liberal political writer whose words could be clever, ruthless and humorous — sometimes in the same sentence:

—”I’m sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn’t make you a better person,” she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

— “If you think his daddy had trouble with ‘the vision thing,’ wait’ll you meet this one,” Ivins on George W. Bush in “The Progressive,” June 1999.

— “If left to my own devices, I’d spend all my time pointing out that he’s weaker than bus-station chili,” on Bill Clinton, from the introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You

—”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?”, in a 2002 column about a California political race.

— “The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy,” from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

— “Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan’s speech; it probably sounded better in the original German,” Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful’s speech to the Republican National Convention.

— “I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults,” from a March 1992 column.

— “I love Texas, but it is a nasty old rawhide mother in the way it bears down on the people who have the fewest defenses,” Ivins wrote in September 2002.

— “….our very own dreaded Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they’ll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot,” from a December 2000 column.

Recent ‘E&P’ Interview With Ivins:
Keep Independent Voices Alive, She Said
E&P Staff
January 31, 2007

NEW YORK (E&P published the following article about Molly Ivins last November in print and online, written by frequent contributor Barbara Bedway. It was one of her final interviews.)

You’d expect Molly Ivins — syndicated columnist, best-selling author, and veteran eviscerator of the pompous and mendacious — to freely offer her opinions to a reporter, and she does, even suggesting this lede: “Molly Ivins Still Not Dead.”

The third recurrence of the breast cancer she has been battling since 1999 (and which recently claimed her good friend, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards) has left the 62-year-old Ivins with precarious balance, minimal hair, and no illusions about the redemptive quality of life-threatening illness. “I’d hoped to become a better person from confronting my own mortality,” she laughs. “But it hasn’t happened.”

What has happened, and continues to happen, are her two columns a week, syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, wittily skewering Republicans and “Republican-lite” Democrats with her trademark, Texas-size sense of humor, politely referred to as “ribald” in some quarters. (She contends she was fired from The New York Times back in 1982 for, among other things, referring to a community’s annual chicken-killing festival as a “gang pluck.”) Her passion for newspapers, and the good they can do, remains undiminished. As chair of the Texas Observer board, she’s especially intent on helping to keep alive the print media’s small, independent voices.

“We must keep these alive, or you lose an incredibly important part of journalism,” she says. “The Observer breaks a lot of stories, but its real function is to move stories up the food chain. They get picked up by The Washington Post and the New York Times. We broke a big chunk of the Indian casinos stuff on Abramoff, and were the first to do the DeLay stuff.

“That proves it doesn’t take that many horses to get the story; it takes a culture where it’s assumed you get up off your ass and get the story.”

Ivins says she’s “perfectly comfortable” with the idea that newsgathering will move to the Internet. You’ll have still the same problems: Find out whether it’s true, and put it in a package that’s useful. “I think this so-called war or competition between bloggers and the mainstream media is just plain silly,” she adds. “We all need to be supporting one another. I’m fond of many bloggers I read.” She cited Atrios, DailyKos and Talking Points Memo.

She’s tired of being asked if she minds being part of a “dying” industry. “What really pisses me off,” she asserts, “is being part of one that’s committing suicide.” She describes “this most remarkable business plan: Newspaper owners look at one another and say, ‘Our rate of return is slipping a bit; let’s solve that problem by making our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.’”

Ivins offers them this piece of advice: “Damn fools, wake up and think.”

What may ultimately happen, she believes, is that “we settle into some form of prestige papers, a bit like the British model, where there are papers that cover government and other important subjects, and a popular press that’s all tits and ass.” For now, however, she reads the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Austin daily, “and a lot more online.” The paper she trusts the most is the Los Angeles Times which, she says, makes the recent cuts there so hard to stomach — “depressing,” actually.

Ivins has published six books, four of them best-sellers, including “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” The author is working with Lou Dubose on her next book, whose subject — what happened to the Bill of Rights? — is undeniably a timely one, she feels. “The publisher doesn’t know this yet,” she avows, “but we’re thinking of calling it ‘Chickensnake in the Hen House.’ It’s a story about getting so scared that you hurt yourself.”

On Oct. 7 in Austin, she was roasted at a benefit for the Texas Democracy Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Observer. The billing for the affair was true to its star: “A Roast? Hell No! It’s a BBQ.”

And how did she react in a column yesterday to the Democrats’ triumph in the midterm elections? “OK, here’s what the D’s have going for them,” she wrote. “New kids. Easy, popular first moves—for example, increasing the minimum wage. Republicans so inept that it’s painful. You want to look at some really, really basic legislation, try fixing the Medicare prescription drug bill. Or the bankruptcy bill. Or new dollar and trade policies.

“Then we get to the real meat of this election. There are all manner of shuffle steps and politically shrewd thing for the D’s to do. But now is not the time to be clever. The Democrats won this election because we are involved in a disastrous war. We know how to do this: Declare victory, and go home.” ++

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

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