Molly Ivins was a rarity among political columnists — a real humanist who saw through the purely partisan manner in which most of the political world worked, a writer of uncommon clarity and a razor-sharp wit.
I first read Ivins when her collection of sharp-tongued columns — “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” — was issued. It was the first of her six books, which also included two books about the current occupant of the White House — books that, had we been a smarter nation, should have stood as a warning to those who might have thought electing the man from Texas made sense.
Her take on liberalism — true liberalism — stands as a guidepost for me:
To Ivins, “liberal” wasn’t an insult term. “Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there’s nothing you can do about being born liberal — fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed,” she wrote in a column included in her 1998 collection, “You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You.”
She said this last year about the Iraq war — a statement that really is about democracy itself:
“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,” Ivins wrote in the Jan. 11 column. “We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!'”
Her death today is a blow to all of us who care about the state of the world. Rest in peace. (Here is a tribute from her syndication service.)
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 