Molly Ivins

Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins (30 August 1944 – 31 January 2007) was an American journalist specializing in Texas politics and culture, and in national politics.

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• All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don’t think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it’s all marvelous fun.
  • "Notes from a rookie", Texas Observer (March 26, 1971).

• There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar. —quoted in People magazine interview, 1991.
  • "The Mouth of Texas." People Weekly (December. 9, 1991).

• In my youth, I aspired to be a great journalist. George Orwell, Albert Camus, and I. F. Stone were my heroes. Great writers and intellectuals who helped illuminate their times. But look, God gave those guys fascism, communism, colonialism, and McCarthyism to struggle against. All I got was Lubbock. It's not my fault.
  • Introduction to Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? (1991)

• I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point-race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.
  If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, "Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty." In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean. Children can be horribly logical.
  The first great political movement to come along in my lifetime was the civil rights movement, and I was for it. The second great question was the war in Vietnam, and I was against it. So they told me I was a double-dyed liberal. I said, "O.K." What did I know? Later on, people took to claiming it meant I was for big government, high taxes, and communism. That's when I learned never to let anyone else define my politics.
  • Introduction to Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? (1991)

• On a personal note: I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I intend to recover. I don’t need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done.
  • Syndicated column (December, 14, 1999).

collection of articles

• as we stagger toward the millenium, I can only hope that this modest oeuvre--as we often say in Amarillo will remind you that we need to stop and laugh along the way. We live in a Great Nation, but those who attempt to struggle through it unarmed with a sense of humor are apt to wind up in my Aunt Eula's Fort Worth Home for the Terminally Literal-Minded, gibbering like some demented neoconservative about the Decline of Civilization. Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government is on the high road to permanent glory. So hang in there, keep fightin' for freedom, raise more hell, and don't forget to laugh, too. (Preface)

• Nothing like a Republican convention to drive you screaming back into the arms of the Democrats. ("Notes from Another Country" 1992)

• Women are receiving so many conflicting messages from this society that no matter what choices we make, or more often, what roles necessity forces on us-work, family or the difficult combination of both-we all feel guilty about what we're doing. It's quite true that full-time homemakers resent the condescension in remarks like Hillary Clinton's "What did you expect me to do, stay home and bake cookies?" But this is a society in which people's worth is judged by how much money they make, and the esteem in which our society holds wives and mothers is reflected in their salaries. ("Notes from Another Country" 1992)

• Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German.
  • About the 1992 Republican party convention, in "Notes from Another Country" 1992).

• Fear is the most dangerous emotion in politics. People do terrible things to one another out of fear. In my opinion, anyone who can look at the raunchier frontiers of American culture without at least some trepidation hasn't got a lick of sense. But we are now looking at a form of fundamentalism in which fear is being deliberately fanned for political purposes.
  The boogeymen are everywhere: Sex education will lead to promiscuity, AIDS, and Chinese communism. Failure to discriminate against gay people will lead to Sodom and Gomorrah. Failure to have official prayers in school means the End Is Nigh.
  I have no claim to expertise on eternal rewards and punishments. But personally, I suspect there is a special place in hell for the fear-mongers.
  • "Beware Those Who Profit From Fear" 1993

• 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.
  • "The Fun's in the Fight." originally published in Mother Jones (1993), also quoted by John Nichols, The Nation, "Remembering Molly Ivins" (January 31, 2007).

collection of articles

• Personally, I think government is a tool, like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build or you can use a hammer to destroy; there is nothing intrinsically good or evil about the hammer itself. It is the purposes to which it is put and the skill with which it is used that determine whether the hammer's work is good or bad. (Introduction)

• [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)

• When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as 'enemies,' it's time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country. ("Stand by, America! Newt Alert!", 1994)

• How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion. ("Look to the Children of the Poor in This Season of Budget-Slashing", 1995)

• Listen to the people who are talking about how to fix what's wrong, not the ones who just work people into a snit over the problems. Listen to the people who have ideas about how to fix things, not the ones who just blame others. ("We're Talking About This Kind of People..." 1995)

• The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point. Poor people do not shut down factories. Poor people are not in charge of those mergers and acquisitions in which tens of thousands of people lose their jobs so a few people in top positions can make a killing on the stock market. Poor people did not decide to keep wages either steady or falling for the last twenty years. Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits. ("Wasting Perfectly Good Anger" 1997)

• I just finished with nine months of treatment for cancer. First they poison you, then they mutilate you, then they burn you. I've had more fun. And when it's over, you're so glad that you're grateful to absolutely everyone. And I am. The trouble is, I'm not a better person. I was in great hopes that confronting my own mortality would make me deeper, more thoughtful. Many lovely people sent books on how to find a more spiritual meaning in life. My response was, "Oh, hell, I can’t go on a spiritual journey—I'm constipated."
  • Syndicated column (October 2000).

• The next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please, pay attention.
  Bush was replaced by his exceedingly Lite Guv Rick Perry, who has really good hair. Governor Goodhair, or the Ken Doll (see, all Texans use nicknames—it's not that odd), is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But the chair of a major House committee says, "Goodhair is much more engaged as governor than Bush was." As the refrain of the country song goes, "O Please, Dear God, Not Another One."
  • "Shrub Flubs His Dub", The Nation (May 31, 2001).

• My friend Mercedes Pena made me get in touch with my emotions just before I had a breast cut off. Just as I suspected, they were awful. "How do you Latinas do this—all the time in touch with your emotions?" I asked her. "That's why we take siestas," she replied.
  • "Who Needs Breasts, Anyway?", Time Magazine (February 18, 2002).

• 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.
  • "Who Needs Breasts, Anyway?", Time Magazine (February 18, 2002).

• Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.
  • "I Told You So", Free Press (May 30, 2002).

• [On the Iraq War, T]he greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? The risks of an invasion setting off reactions from a hideous civil war in Iraq to toppling regimes all over the Middle East is very real. Also at risk is the very international cooperation necessary to track Al Qaeda.
• There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now. We are brushing off world opinion as though it mattered not a whit what other people think of us.
  • "Blast from the past", Free Press (November 19, 2002).

• I assume we can defeat [Saddam] 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?'
  • "Appalling silence", Free Press (January 16, 2003).

• Ivins was first and foremost a journalist, in the highest and best sense of the word. She spent the time, did the digging. She had a remarkable gift for words, a command of English coupled with her flamboyant Texas wit. She directed her reportorial skill at the powerful, holding to account the elected and the self-appointed. She first questioned authority, then skewered it...In her final column, titled “Stand Up Against the Surge,” Molly wrote: “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. Raise hell. … We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!' ”
  • Amy Goodman "Bang Pots and Pans for Molly Ivins", Democracy Now! (February 8, 2007)

• Every so often, something happens that reminds you viscerally of the supremely unfair, amoral nature of the universe. For me, the death of Molly Ivins was one of those things. A genuinely funny woman with whom I agreed more consistently than perhaps any other pundit, Molly was often a source of inspiration to me. Her columns planted the seed for more than one Slowpoke cartoon.
  • Jen Sorensen "Slowpoke: One nation, oh my God!" (2008)

• Mother Jones archives
• The Nation archives
• Texas Observer archives