Gawker gets serious (!)
And Now She’s Dead: Molly Ivins
The Legislature provides us with an array of verbal treasures. During
a debate on a bill to stop out-of-wedlock children from getting
welfare, Bob Eckhardt said, “It is not so much the natural bastards I
worry about as the self-made ones.” Craig Washington, filibustering
one of those idiot flag-burning amendments, said, “I prefer those who
would burn the flag and keep the Constitution to those who would tear
up the Constitution and keep the flag.” After yet another
unsuccessful effort to modify the Texas sodomy law, the authors of a
successful amendment were slapping backs and high-fiving. A voice
from the press box said, “Sergeant, you must go over and reprimand
both those men. Because under the amendments just passed by them, it
is now illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state.” The
annual Waring Blender Award for Mixed Metaphor is always appreciated,
as in: “If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, it will let the
head of the camel into the tent.” Then there was the special time we
were having Disability Day to honor the handicapped, and Speaker Gib
Lewis said to those in the wheelchairs wedged up into the balcony,
“And now, would y’all stand and be recognized?”
That’s from Molly Ivins, who has passed away after a battle with
cancer at the age of 62. Ivins was always a heroine of ours: she
proved - if it needed proving - that a woman could be just as funny
(if not funnier) than a man, that a Texas liberal could be just as
tough (if not tougher) than a Texas conservative, and that a
journalist could achieve a large modicum of fame and still remain
committed to the small papers for which she started writing. There’ll
be a lot of talk in the next few days about her legacy as a liberal
and her legacy as a woman, all of it deserved; we want to focus on
her legacy as a writer. Sure, she got a little strident toward the
end, but when she was in her prime (we have owned three copies of
Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? because we’ve thumbed through
the first two so frequently that they’ve fallen apart) there was no
one better. Whatever your political perspective, Ivins’ writing was
so distinctive that you couldn’t help be charmed (much in the way
liberals cannot deny the genius of Mencken, we know more than a few
conservatives who disagreed with her politics but were unable to
resist her prose). She is a voice that will truly be missed. Rest in
peace, Molly