Tribute to Molly Ivins coming on

[roni]

on C-Span2 here in Portland in 3 minutes.

Fitting that it follows an interview with Lynne Cheney

Don't know if it is coming on where you are, but Molly was cool, whether you agree with her politics or not -she was a flat-out Texan

[roni]

Starting out with a version of Kitty Wells' song, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

[roni]

t Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

As I sit here tonight, the jukebox playing
The tune about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are saying
It brings mem'ries when I was a trustful wife

Chorus:
It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start, 'most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a prick to blame

[roni]

Maya Angelou recited

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

but added to it

Amazing
reverant

and they are making me cry

[roni]

Lou Dubose:

"She considered me a man of many words but few sentences"

[roni]

Investigative reporters are like hunting dogs. Send them out on a story and when they come back with a good one, pat them on the head and say "good dog, good dog. They will go right out and find another one. It is what they are bred and trained to do."

[roni]

About studying how stupid we are:

Some 10% of us believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

[roni]

and to Vera, from Tuna Texas who said

"You're gonna act like a Christian or I'm gonna slap the snot out of you."

[Seakony]

Gee Roni...7 posts in a row...I guess you were the only one interested in miss molly. I did enjoy her back in the days of Ann Richards....I miss Ann Richards..now She was a true Texan.

[roni]

Originally Posted by Seakony

Gee Roni...7 posts in a row...I guess you were the only one interested in miss molly. I did enjoy her back in the days of Ann Richards....I miss Ann Richards..now She was a true Texan.

I have been touched by Molly Ivins for decades.

Ann and Molly were both true Texans
I enjoyed Ann also.

[Just Lucky]

Aww, It warms my heart to have you mentioned one of the great Texans of our time.Man do I miss Molly Ivins. She was uniquely Texas womanhood at it's best feisty, smart, ready to raise some hell and have some fun doin' it. I'm sorta tearin' up here's some stuff printed after the cancer took our Molly. First 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.”
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.”
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.”
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?’ ”
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.”
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.”
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.

And Maya Angelou:

Up to the walls of Jericho
She marched with a spear in her hand
Go blow them ram horns she cried
For the battle is in my hand
The walls have not come down, but they have been given a serious shaking.
That Jericho voice is stilled now.
Molly Ivins has been quieted.
The writer and journalist, dearly loved and admired by many, hated and feared by many, died of cancer in her Texas home on Jan. 31, 2007.
The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty, which she railed against valiantly all her public life, have not fallen, but their truculence to do so does not speak against her determination to make them collapse.
Weeks before she died, she launched what she called "an old-fashioned newspaper crusade" against President Bush's announcement that he was going to send more troops to Iraq.
She wrote, "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. 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!' "
Years ago there was a fundraising gala for People for the American Way in New York, and Molly Ivins was keynote speaker. I was a loyal collector and serious Ivins reader, but I had not met the author. Another famous journalist, who was to have introduced her, had his flight canceled in a Southern city. Norman Lear, founder of the organization, asked me to introduce her. I did not hesitate. I spoke glowingly about Ms. Ivins for a few minutes, then, suddenly, a six-foot-tall, red-haired woman sprang from the wings. She strode onto the stage and over to the microphone. She gave me an enveloping hug and said, in that languorous Texas accent, "Maya Angelou and I are identical twins, we were separated at birth."
I am also six feet tall, but I am not white. She was under 50 when she made the statement, and I was in my middle 60s, but our hearts do beat in the same rhythm. Whoever separated us at birth must know it did not work. We have been in the struggle for equal rights for all people since we met on that Waldorf Astoria stage. We have laughed together without apology and we have wept when weeping was necessary.
I shall be weeping a little more these days but I shall never forget the charge. Joshua commanded the people to shout and the walls came tumbling down.
Molly,
I am shouting,
With two voices,
Walls come down!
Walls come down!
Walls come down!
Poet Maya Angelou is the author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

[Sol]

JL,
Thanks for posting Maya Angelou's and Paul Krugman's comments. I miss reading Molly Ivin's work. I always looked forward to reading her column which would appear in the newspaper here. I do miss her. I love her style of writing. What a loss.

[Just Lucky]

One of my favorite Molly Ivins stories is about how she managed to lose her job at the New York Times. WARNING if you don't enjoy the irreverant stop reading now! Remember you were warned!:

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."

[Sol]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

One of my favorite Molly Ivins stories is about how she managed to lose her job at the New York Times. WARNING if you don't enjoy the irreverant stop reading now! Remember you were warned!:

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."

[Just Lucky]

Another wonderful story this one by Molly and designed to give the Democrats of Texas a smile:

A few years before Billie Carr died this September at age 74, a friend called to ask how she was doing. "Well," she said, "They just impeached my boy up in Washington, there's not a Democrat left in statewide office in Texas, the Republicans have taken every judgeship in Harris County, and yesterday I found out I have cancer."
Pause.
"I think I'll go out and get a pregnancy test because with my luck, it'll come back positive."

Aw shucks, I just happen to have a file of stuff from her here's some of it:

"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."
What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.
The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.
It's hard to argue against cynics -- they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
In the real world, there are only two ways to deal with corporate misbehavior: One is through government regulation and the other is by taking them to court. What has happened over 20 years of free-market proselytizing is that we have dangerously weakened both forms of restraint, first through the craze for "deregulation" and second through endless rounds of "tort reform," all of which have the effect of cutting off citizens' access to the courts. By legally bribing politicians with campaign contributions, the corporations have bought themselves immunity from lawsuits on many levels.
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.
• 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.
I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point -- race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.
Good thing we've still got politics in Texas -- finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
• Conservatives have been mad at the Supreme Court since it decided to desegregate the schools in 1954 and seen fit to blame the federal bench for everything that has happened since then that they don’t like.
• You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It's their job.

"I don't have any children," Molly wrote, "so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin. I figure freedom and justice beat having your name in marble any day. Besides, if there is another life after this one, think how much we'll get to laugh watching it all.... We may not be able to take it with us, but we can still fight for freedom after we're gone."

In a July 2005 column, she wrote: "We suffer the worst attack on this country since Pearl Harbor, and the Bush administration sends the FBI after the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU exists to protect every citizen's rights as defined in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States. The ACLU works solely through the legal system: It does not advocate violence, terrorism or any other damn thing except the Bill of Rights. Since when is that extremist?... We are living in a time when our government is investigating an organization that stands for the highest and best American ideals."



"You have to have fun while you're fighting for freedom,"


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."


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."

This last one is also a favorite of mine. It is one of her ideas that another progressive Texan, Bill Moyers should run for President:

One time in the Johnson years, LBJ called on Moyers to say the blessing at a dinner. "Speak up, Bill," Lyndon roared. "I can’t hear you." Moyers replied, "I wasn’t speaking to you, sir." That would be the point of a run by Moyers: He doesn’t change to whom he is speaking just because some president is yelling at him.