The Irrepressible and Irreplaceable Molly Ivins

It is with much sorrow that we at Vermont Woman learned the news of Molly Ivins’ death, on January 31, from breast cancer.

Molly’s syndicated column has appeared in every issue of Vermont Woman since we began publishing in October of 2003. We subtitled her column “Molly Said What?!”, a playful reference to one of her book titles  – Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? A number of us on the Vermont Woman staff were among the lucky Vermonters who met Molly in August of 2003, when she spoke in Burlington on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union – an organization she tirelessly supported, gratis. Her insightful political commentary was fueled by her passionate and eloquent defense of the poor, weak, and disenfranchised. Molly’s longtime friend and fellow Texan Jim Hightower remembers her as “full of wit, smarts, and sass, grabbing readers by their hearts, minds, gonads, and funny bones.”

Politically, and in terms of her own health, the last half a dozen years have been deeply troubling times. And yet, through it all, Molly not only maintained her extraordinary sense of humor, but prompted – indeed, called upon – her readers to keep laughing while fighting the good fight for social justice. As evidence to social activists that they could be creative and have fun in their efforts, Molly delighted in recounting the example of a community in Texas that protested a Ku Klux Klan rally in their town by mooning the hooded Klansmen as they marched by.

It was Molly’s duty, as she saw it, to poke fun at the powerful and hold them accountable. Dismayed by what she called his welfare “deform”, she referred to then President Bill Clinton as “weaker than bus station chili.”

Of the dubious Lone Star State bona fides of then President George H.W. Bush, she noted that true Texans don’t use the word “summer” as a verb.

And in response to a particularly rabid speech by Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention, came this gem: “It probably sounded better in its original German.”

Last year, President Clinton described Molly as someone who was "good when she praised me and who was painfully good when she criticized me."

Molly wrote the following in August of 2001, in relation to women seeking higher office in the United States:

When I heard recently of Geraldine Ferraro's battle with cancer, I was suddenly jerked back to that summer in San Francisco in 1984 when she became the first woman ever nominated for vice-president. I was a 40-year-old newspaper reporter of rather outstanding cynicism, if I do say so myself. Furthermore, I thought it was a bad pick politically: She didn't have the credentials, and the First Woman must always have more credentials, so it was obvious her greatest draw was being female. That night, I stood in the back of the Cow Palace, notebook in hand, taking down every word she said, with tears running down my face for 35 minutes because one of us was finally up there.

In her January 11, 2007 column, which would ultimately be her last, Ivins wrote: Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. It’s like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen?  How could we have been so stupid?

It’s important to note that Ivins was not so stupid – she recognized the folly of the Iraq invasion, and was a consistent – and frequently lone – voice questioning it from the beginning:

The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? (November, 2002); 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?’ (January, 2003).

There are two messages Molly Ivins has left us.

The first is a plea she made in 1999 at the end of her column, in a postscript that announced she had breast cancer: “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.”

The second is from her final column, written twenty days before her death:

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. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

Here are links to just some of the wonderful tributes to Molly Ivins available online. The first, however, is not a tribute, but rather, a video about Texas “educational materials” that features the priceless storytelling of Molly Ivins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXUUsDGxkU

http://www.texasobserver.org/

http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins.html

"Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for."

– Molly Ivins