Molly Ivins
From Philosopedia
Ivins, Molly (30 August 1944 - 31 January 2007)
Mary Tyler Ivins - who became a widely read journalist with controversial views about politics - was born in Monterey, California, to James and Margot Ivins. Her father, the general counsel and later President of Tenneco Corporation, an oil and gas company, was a conservative Republican. From her mother and her grandmother, both educated at Smith College, Ivins developed more of a liberal outlook In politics and of her father once said, "I believe that all the strength I have comes from learning how to stand up to him." Her father, who developed advanced cancer, shot himself to death in 1998, the year before she was found to have breast cancer.
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Early Life and Achievements
Ivins grew up in River Oaks, Texas, an affluent Houston neighborhood. Sent to a private school, she thought of herself as being too big-boned and tall, "a Clydesdale among thoroughbreds." After Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1966 she studied in Paris at the Institute of Political Science, then in 1967 earned a master's degree at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Her journalistic ventures include having been a writer and columnist for a variety of journals: The Houston Chronicle; The Minneapolis Star Tribune; Austin's The Texas Observer; The New York Times from 1976 to 1982; bureau chief in Denver of Rocky Mountain; Dallas Times Herald; Fort Worth Star Telegram; and she was a syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate, Louisiana, from 2001 until her death.
She wrote Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? (1991); Nothin' But Good Times Ahead (1993); You Got to Dance with Them What Bring You (1998); Shrub (2000); Bushwacked (2003); and "Who Let the Dogs In? (2004).
She contributed her iconoclastic views to such periodicals as The Nation, the New York Times Book Review, Mother Jones, Ms., and Progressive.
She was the co-recipient of the Damon Runyon award given by the Denver Press Club, 1996; was the finalist for a Pulitzer Prize (3 times); was named Outstanding Alumna, Columbia School of Journalism, 1976; was recipient of Headliner's Award for best Texas column, 1991; the William Allen White Award, University of Kansas, 2001; the Smith medal of Smith College, 2001; the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Progress and Service, 2003; the Pringle Prize for Washington Journalism, Columbia University, 2003; the Eugene V. Debs Award, 2003; the David Brower Award, Sierra Club, 2004; and the Otis Social Justice Award, Wheaton College, 2004.
A Journalist's Delight
- probably sounded better in the original German.
To People, she said,
- There are two kinds of humor. [One] makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That's what I do.
She derided George W. Bush, calling him "Shrub" and "Dubya" and campaigning against his re-election in 2004. Because of the war he had started in Iraq, she claimed, Bush should be impeached.
At The Times, she was the only reporter who wore blue jeans, went barefoot, and brought her dog to work with her. She waited for people to ask her dog's name, which was Shit. Later, when she left, she wrote, "The New York Times is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun."
A member of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, she loathed Dallas, suggesting that it was the kind of town "that would have rooted for Goliath to beat David.
Ivins never married. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, first in 1999, then a recurrence in 2003 and again in November 2005, she described her treatment, according to The Times obituary writer Katharine Q. Seelye, "First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.
A 2009 work, Molly Ivins, A Rebel Life (PublicAffairs), is reviewed negatively in The New York Times.
Journalists' Memories
Warren Allen Smith, then a member of the International Press Institute (IPI) whose "Scene From Manhattan" column appeared throughout the West Indies in the 1970s, met Ivins because a news event he was covering happened in 1976 after he'd already met his weekly deadline:
- A black-owned sailing ship, Freelance, lost in a race with others from Bermuda to New York City and had to be towed, where it received from the city an $8,000 parking ticket and could not afford to move nor pay its crew. Smith called The New York Times city editor with the story and was asked to accompany their reporter on one of her first assignments. Neither knew the other, and on the taxi ride (she paid), he learned she had studied at his alma mater, Columbia, and she learned he had been a book review editor in the mid-1950s of The Humanist, a journal for non-believers. When he inquired about religion, she responded, "You could call me an atheist," adding, "but I'm comfortable with just being a humanist, a human being." At the site, he introduced her to the sailboat's captain, and her sympathetic story the following resulted in money that was found to resolve the problem.
Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column following her death, wrote,
- 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.
At her memorial, held February 4th, 2007, in a large space big enough to hold everyone - the First United Methodist Church, so many came that the overflow had to be sent to an adjacent chapel. Reporter Robert Kleeman, of the University of Texas's Daily Texan, wrote about the event that was marked with laughter and celebration, and ended with a sassy rendition of Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" by Texas blues icon Marcia Ball:
- Andy Ivins, brother to late columnist Molly Ivins, recalled his sister smashing a beer can on the deck of the family's boat in New York to the puzzlement of those on board. He also remembered his sister disliking UT fraternities but devouring the beer they dispensed. His stories set the tone for Ivins' memorial service, where those in attendance seemed determined not to focus on her passing, but on the unorthodox qualities that defined her as a friend and political megaphone. . . . Andy said he once asked Molly why she walked so fast, and she replied, "What you do is you look up at the horizon, and you go quicker."
- Andy Ivins attended law school while his sister was on her rise to popularity. "Molly spoke at my law school graduation," he said. "In fact, that's probably why I got into law school, because they wanted Molly to speak at graduation."
- Sara Maley, Molly Ivins' sister, told the congregation of supporters about a mishap on a boat she compared to a "bathtub." Maley told Ivins to drop the anchor, she said. Ivins threw out the anchor, but it wasn't tied to the boat's mast. The story garnered waves of laughter as did many other tales of Ivins' adventures.
- However, Linda Lewis, who had worked with Ivins, received the loudest applause, quoting one of the columnist's signature political zingers. "The next time I tell you somebody from Texas should not be president, please, pay attention," Lewis read. Attendees roared thunderously at the statement, which originally appeared in one of many columns defaming President George W. Bush's tenure.
Remembrances of the 62-year-old maverick writer continued late Sunday at Scholz' Beer Garden. Many friends said the popular drinking establishment was the only place fit to celebrate Ivins's life.
Said Courtney Anderson, her friend, at one point in her life, Molly referred to God as "Fred."
Jessica Mitford, her agnostic friend, told her shortly before her own death from cancer, "Well, I had a good run, didn't I?"
Ivins could have said the same.
The 2007 Memorial
A memorial celebration for Ivins was held 11 September 2007 at the Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street, New York City.
- The auditorium was filled mostly with journalists, and on a full screen they watched and laughed at selected vocals by the Rock Bottom Remainders. Leonard Maltin sang "If I Had A Talking Picture of You." Dave Barry got big laughs from grammar-loving writers with his "Proofreading Woman." Stephen King sang "Stand By Me." Ivins herself sang, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." Finally, a collection of several dozen photographs was displayed that showed her as a child and up to the end when she had lost all her hair because of the cancer.
- Speakers included journalist Calvin Trillin; ACLU President Nadine Strossen; poet Maya Angelou; editor John Leonard; former Texas Observer editor Lou Dubose, who announced that her last but forthcoming book would be entitled Book of Wrongs; New York Times book review editor Eden Ross Lipson; and actor Kathleen Chalfant, who read from Ivins's final column - Chalfant in the Broadway play, Wit, similarly played the role with a bald head to show the result of radiological cancer treatments.
Following is the closing paragraph of her goodbye column to Texas Texas Observer readers published 18 June 1976 as she left to join The New York Times:
- And for me, it’s leaving time.
- I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky…. I’ll remember, I’ll remember…sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people.
- There is one thing, an important thing, I have to tell you before I go. What I’m going to tell you is more than a fact. It is a Truth. I have spent six years checking it out, and I know it to be true. The people who subscribe to The Texas Observer are good people. In fact, you’re the best people in this state. I don’t care if you think that’s pretentious or sentimental—it’s just true.
- If I got to naming you, I would never stop, so I won’t. But please believe me that all of you whom I know and many of you whom I know only by letter are in my mind as I write this—even if I do forget your names half the time. Always excepting, of course, the turkey who sends me hate mail after my annual gun-control editorial. Turkey, turkey, turkey.
- I wanted to call this “The Long Goodbye” but Kaye won’t let me. She wanted to call it “Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.”
- I love you. Good-bye my friends.
