Molly Ivins: Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball

/app/uploads/frack_files/ivins_ball.jpg — Molly Ivins

Mary Tyler “Molly” Ivins (August 30, 1944 – January 31, 2007) was an American newspaper columnist, author, and political commentator, known for her humorous and insightful writing, which often used satire and wit to critique political figures and policies.

Born in California and raised in Texas, Ivins attended Smith College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She began her journalism career at the Minneapolis Tribune where she became the first female police reporter at the paper. Ivins joined The Texas Observer in the early 1970s and later moved to The New York Times. She became a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald in the 1980s, and then the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the Times Herald was sold and shuttered in 1991. Her column was subsequently syndicated by Creators Syndicate and carried by hundreds of newspapers.

A biography of Ivins, Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, was co-written in 2010 by PEN-USA winning presidential biographer Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith. The Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 said:

Ivins’s pithy assessments of politics and life at large crackle with broad Texas humor. Combining her talent for culling information with her razor-sharp wit, she throws a powerful knockout punch. … Whether one agrees with her or not, Ivins’s pen pierces both the brain and the funny bone.
Terry Eastland, ed. Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994: A Critical Review of the Media (1994) p 291

Molly Ivins. Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball. 2 Nov 2006. TruthDig.

Bush & Co.’s attacks on Sen. John Kerry’s quasi-gaffe reveal the utter political bankruptcy of the GOP.

AUSTIN, Texas — I’m still worried sick. The R’s have seized the news cycle! Which says more about how dim American politics are than anything else I can think of.

Apparently, the Michael J. Fox affair didn’t have enough meat to it, and even Rep. Mark Foley is out of the game, so now we have the semi-hemi-demi-gaffe from John Kerry, who is not in fact running for anything.

If Kerry had been given as many breaks for misspeaking as George W. Bush has, he’d be a professor of grammar by now. And this all shows what the Bush regime has: attacks on Kerry, Clinton, Kennedy, Pelosi, liberals! … but not any actual policies to help it.

The Great Wall of Republican ads is bearing down on us — race-baiting, scare tactics and sleaze-mongering. (Who knew so many people had signed up to “promote the homosexual agenda”? I don’t even know what it is. But apparently, you don’t have to sign up to support — you could be part of it and not even know!) The R’s are throwing distorting ads, funded by endless money, all over the place. Can the people see that, and ignore and punish them for it?

Aside from the Wall of Ads, we are also faced with Disenfranchisement of Democrats again. For some reason, this has come to be regarded as “one of Karl’s dirty tricks” — a clever ploy, a little hardball, rather to be admired.

I’ve covered East Texas politics for a long time. All over East Texas — and elsewhere around the country — there are elderly black Americans who don’t have driver’s licenses because they’ve never had a car, who can’t read because they never got to third grade, and who are scared of The Law because for 70 years or better they’ve been oppressed by it. So if they see a sheriff’s car blocking the road to the polling place and officials checking people’s papers, they head the other direction.

Voting isn’t hard, and believe it or not, these elderly blacks have worked all their lives and paid into Social Security and paid taxes, and they know a lot about how government affects people.

With pundits in Washington, who just a few weeks ago were claiming the Democrats would likely take the House by a razor-thin margin, now victoriously claiming they all along knew it would be a wipeout, I just feel that overconfidence juice starting to kick in. “Maybe 20 seats, maybe 40 seats” … yeah. People could think: “So that’s settled. I don’t even really have to vote.” Folks, step up and make sure there’s some control on this regime.

May I remind you what this election is about? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, unprecedented presidential powers, unmatched incompetence, unparalleled corruption, unwarranted eavesdropping, Katrina, Enron, Halliburton, global warming, Cheney’s secret energy task force, record oil company profits, $3 gasoline, FEMA, the Supreme Court, Diebold, Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Terri Schiavo, stem cell research, golden parachutes, shrunken pensions, unavailable and expensive healthcare, habeas corpus, no weapons of mass destruction, sacrificed soldiers and Iraqi civilians, wasted billions, Taliban resurgence, expiration of the assault weapons ban, North Korea, Iran, intelligent design, Swift boat hit squads, and on and on.

This election is about that, but much more — it’s about honor, dignity and comity in this country. It’s about the Constitution, which gives us this great nation. Bush ran on a pledge of “restoring honor and integrity” to the White House. Instead, he brought us Tom DeLay, Roy Blunt, Katherine Harris, John Doolittle, Jerry Lewis, Richard Pombo, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and an illegal and immoral war in Iraq. People, it’s up to you.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Molly Ivins. Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball. 2 Nov 2006. TruthDig. Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Quotations

Notable quotes^[36] attributed to Ivins include:

“Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don’t much care for… politics is not about those people in Washington, those people in your state capitol… this country is run by us, it is our deal, we run this country, we are the board of directors, we own it, they are just the people we’ve hired to drive the bus for a while.”^[37]
On the subject of Pat Buchanan‘s combative Culture War Speech at the 1992 Republican Convention, which attracted controversy over Buchanan’s aggressive rhetoric against Bill Clinton, liberals, supporters of abortion and gay rights, and for his comparison of American politics to religious warfare, Ivins quipped that the speech had “probably sounded better in the original German“.^[38]
“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. … We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!'” (from her last column)^[39]
“Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.”^[40]
“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.”—quoted by John Nichols for The Nation^[41] Original source: “The Fun’s in the Fight” column for Mother Jones, 1993.^[42] Part of the original quote is currently posted in The Daily Beast offices.^[43]
On Bill Clinton: “If left to my own devices, I’d spend all my time pointing out that he’s weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal.” (Introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You)^[44]
On James M. Collins, U.S. Representative, R-Dallas: “If his IQ slips any lower we’ll have to water him twice a day.” Collins had said that the current energy crisis could be averted if “we didn’t use all that gas on school busing.”^[45] Ivins’s quote engendered substantial controversy, with calls and letters pouring into her newspaper, The Dallas Times Herald. The newspaper turned the controversy into a publicity campaign, with billboards all over the city asking, “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”—which she later employed as the title for her first book.^[46]
“Of Bush’s credentials as an economic conservative, there is no question at all—he owes his political life to big corporate money; he’s a CEO’s wet dream. He carries their water, he’s stumpbroke—however you put it, George W. Bush is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. … We can find no evidence that it has ever occurred to him to question whether it is wise to do what big business wants.”^[47]