Molly Ivins died yesterday after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Thinking about the mainstream press with its suck-up approach to authority and its inability to write with true wit, her death is a giant loss. Who else would report on a Pat Buchanan screed on America’s “culture wars†by commenting that “it probably sounded better in its original Germanâ€. And is there another former NY Times reporter who lost his or her job by referring to a community chicken killing as a “gang pluckâ€?
Her reporting on Texas politics was legendary and prepared her well for the odious task of reporting on the Dubya Bush presidency, a task that allowed her to be one of a small number of journalists who saw through all the smoke and mirrors that has given us the Iraq fiasco.
A few choice quotes published in the Houston Chronicle follow:
“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
“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.
“….our very own dreaded [Texas] 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.