Jolly Molly Ivins G’Bye: Cheers!
Few people I know could hold their booze like jolly Molly Ivins. R.I.P.
I was more a professional associate of hers rather than some sort of close friend. But on those occasions I found myself sitting next to or across from her I was also impressed by the way she could drink just about everyone under the table...and keep going.
Molly's wit knew no bounds. She was an extraordinarily gifted writer and not a half-bad political analyst. She was an irrepressible force of life and it's an empty cliche and a gross understatement to say she will be missed.
She was also about the best damn thing Texas has produced since I dunno when.
Here's to you Molly, cheers and give 'em hell up there.
I was more a professional associate of hers rather than some sort of close friend. But on those occasions I found myself sitting next to or across from her I was also impressed by the way she could drink just about everyone under the table...and keep going.
Molly's wit knew no bounds. She was an extraordinarily gifted writer and not a half-bad political analyst. She was an irrepressible force of life and it's an empty cliche and a gross understatement to say she will be missed.
She was also about the best damn thing Texas has produced since I dunno when.
Here's to you Molly, cheers and give 'em hell up there.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:56 pm
This is a big loss — Molly’s irreplaceable. She made us laugh, wince and think all at once.
February 1st, 2007 at 1:32 am
Molly Ivins was wonderful and very, very funny. And I hate to say this so soon after her death, but I have always had very mixed feelings about her writings about George Bush. She played very heavily into, and helped to foster, a feeling of intellectual superiority on the part of liberals and leftists. This feeling is no doubt justified when it comes to Bush himself, but in actual practice it has turned into a feeling by one part of America that it is superior to another part, thus decreasing dialogue and helping to polarize the country. John Stewart and Steven Colbert, brilliant and funny as they are–and believe me, I appreciate them–have played very similar roles.
As I say, I have mixed feelings, because I have to admit that I have enjoyed this style of humor a lot personally. But how much has it helped us win over hearts and minds in the heartland?
February 1st, 2007 at 2:09 am
Balter, the “feelings of superiority” of the Right were being stoked on the Right, for the Right, by the Right, long before Stewart and Colbert came along to lampoon them. The Right has been treating liberals as idiots for a long time. A title like “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” [Coulter] reeks of intellectual superiority. Don’t even get me started about Rush Limbaugh. How do you create dialogue with people whose stock in trade is to subvert it by convincing their admirers that they are so much smarter than those with whom they differ that any sincere dialogue is pointless? Rightwingers don’t watch the O’Reilly Factor to hear dialogue that will make them think. They watch it to see O’Reilly stomp his liberal guests with his explosively bitter, interruptive outrage.
When it comes to what one can possibly say about the Rightwing Shoutmeisters, Colbert’s schtick says it best: imitation is the sincerest form of commentary. To take these people seriously at all is to flirt with liberal self-parody anyway, it is to attempt being soberly reasonable with the P.T. Barnums of Unreason. So why not just feed it straight back?
February 1st, 2007 at 5:58 am
Michael Balter:
It’s hard to overstate the effect of Ann Richard’s 1994 loss had on the Left in Texas They had been fighting for two generations for dominance within the Democratic party, and were settling in to enjoy the fruits their triumph.
The day of that loss, Governor Richards enjoyed a favorable rating of over 60%. George W. Bush ran a very, very disciplined and — this may be hard to believe — positive campaign.
I believe your mixed feelings are rooted in the post-Richards period when liberals tried to come to grips with their loss.
I’m in Texas, and my little county was uniformly democratic from Reconstruction on up to about 1990. After the last election, when the Republican swept all county offices (again), the county Democratic Chairperson loosed a comment about “Gestapo dominance.”
Texans loved and respected Molly Ivins and Ann Richards, and the Texas Republican Party is forever in their debt.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:40 am
Balter- I disagree with you wholeheartedly. The likes of Ivins (and Colbert and Stewart) were there to rally the forces, and did so with inspiring – and purple – prose. Ivins’ humour was sometimes mean spirited, sure, but in fun….and her courage to speak out on Palestine when it was unpopular was something to be admired. She was far more than just a humorist. She was one of the last great “columnists” who could take 500-750 words on a given topic and make it funny and informative. In the online age that is rare.
Molly Ivins Presente!
February 1st, 2007 at 8:27 am
What Ivins (and Jim Hightower) did with W was issue wise warnings, but most of the rest of the media was too busy straining madly to make a laughingstock of Al Gore.
The headlines today reflect the result: Our Born Again President has been screwing with science, and we’ve lost more time on Global Warming. While Balter wants Dems to fearlessly
throw their careers on the fire to fight the right, he doesn’t even want to tease them. Pathetic.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:25 am
Definitely an original and, I imagine, an inspiration to many female would-be columnists. Her style is often imitated though never replicated. She is already missed.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
You really can’t blame Molly Ivins that so many smug and insular lefties have stranded themselves on an island of superiority. (And crippled their effectiveness in American politics.)
Ivins was exactly the opposite. She had no problem talking to the good ol’ boys, fighting, sharing a laugh, ripping ‘em a new one in her column the next day and having a drink and a laugh with them about it the day after that.
That smug fundamentalist slice of the liberals and left can’t bear that kind of rough and tumble. For them, anyone who disagrees is the devil. Despite all the anger and denunciations, they usually can’t muster enough courage to make eye contact with the other side. (Or even with lefties who question their fundamentalism — been there, done that.)
Molly didn’t live by those fears. She came out swinging, told the truth as she saw it and wasn’t afraid to look anybody in the eye while she did it.
I didn’t know her that well, but over a long time, and no matter when I saw saw or talked to her, that one quality always came shining through.
We just lost one of the rare great ones. And she was goddam funny, too.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Mark Schubb, I think, has got a good fix on Molly’s tone and approach. Though in more general terms I think Balter has a point — more general in the sense that I dont think Molly is guilty of this sin.
What I DO object to is our friend K Nardy dragging Jim Hightower into the wake. I refuse to put these two folks into the same category. Molly was a roaring lioness overflowing with talent. Hightower is but a hairless chihuahua who can;t do much but barely bark out the same old same old one liners. Sorry. Also… Molly was knocking ‘em out of the park right up to the day of her death. Hightower’s real career ended almost 20 years ago and the rest is just animated afterlife.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
She was fun and funny and inspired me in many ways. She also had a way with words.
I disagree with Balter’s characterization. Polarization is sometimes a good thing and her fighting spirit was one of the things I most admired about her.
As I learned from first hand experience, cocky, blustery right-wing Texans in cowboy hats and boots can be pretty intimidating, but Molly, along with Will Rogers, Ann Richards, Jim Hightower, etc., represented another tradition. And she was brilliant at taking those rightwingers down a peg. She was a huge morale booster.
Mostly I’ll remember how funny she was, like how she’d casually describe Texas’s Christian right as “Shiite Baptists”.
February 1st, 2007 at 2:48 pm
May I associate myself with the remarks of Brother Schubb who certainly knows a thing or two about the “Fundementalist” Left. I’m not from Texas like Bob Williams but I thought one of the reasons Ann Richard lost was that “Concealed Carry” law – oh and maybe she didn’t put enough people to death!
February 1st, 2007 at 4:01 pm
You know I was thinking – Buchwald and now Ivans. What’s left in print to laugh at?
February 1st, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Be sure to read the last half of this column in which Krugman reprises Ivins’ take on Iraq dating back to before the war. She stated what now appears obvious when few journalists were willing to buck BushCo’s bullshit.
February 2, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist-New York Times
Missing Molly Ivins
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist, died of breast cancer on Wednesday. I first met her more than three years ago, when our book tours crossed. She was, as she wrote, “a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader’s record.â€
I can’t claim to have known her well. But I spent enough time with her, and paid enough attention to her work, to know that obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.
She explained her philosophy in a stinging 1995 article in Mother Jones magazine about Rush Limbaugh. “Satire … has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful,†she wrote. “When you use satire against powerless people … it is like kicking a cripple.â€
Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it’s most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven’t seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.
I’ve been going through Molly’s columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as “Bush haters†anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:
Nov. 19, 2002: “The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? … There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.â€
Jan. 16, 2003: “I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ â€
July 14, 2003: “I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. … We don’t need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers — we need people who know how to fix water and power plants.â€
Oct. 7, 2003: “Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. …
“I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.â€
So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?
With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war — or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn’t see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.
Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.
Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same.
And it’s not over. Many of those who failed the big test in 2002 and 2003 are now making excuses for the “surge.†Meanwhile, the same techniques of allegation and innuendo that were used to promote war with Iraq are being used to ratchet up tensions with Iran.
Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:49 am
No Reg she was smarter. Funny too.
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm
I think you’re right – she was smarter. But the thing that set her apart in her comments on Iraq wasn’t her genius as regards either the Middle East or military strategy that she had the guts to state the obvious and the chickenshit brigade couldn’t because they were too cowed to even ask themselves the right questions.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:59 pm
What Marc, Mark, Paul K. and Reg said.
A smart, kick-ass, no-shit sister of the first water. To lose her uniquely sane-making voice this soon feels intolerably unfair. Good golly, Miss Molly. We was robbed.
February 18th, 2007 at 12:49 am
well I am replying late and noone will see this but it does not matter. Back in my non profit days , I wound up in the kitchen of a hotel restuarant smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey with Molly–she was late for her speech, I got in huge trouble for facilitating her lateness/drunkness, and it is one of the most favorite memories of my life..god rest her soul…