Thursday, February 01, 2007

Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

I try to resist letting this blog slip into an obituary page. I think I've given a nod in the form of a post to Red Auerbach, Syd Barrett, Richard Pryor, and that might be it. I passed on James Brown, Gerald Ford, Robert Altman, Barbaro, and Desmond Dekker. I'm still mulling a Joseph Barbera post. I think I may have briefly mentioned Pat Morita.

Molly Ivins gets a post. The Texas firebrand journalist died last night after a battle with breast cancer. I can't say we had a more charming, witty, sweet, and passionate journalist fighting the good fight in the US.

Here's the statement/obituary
from her paper, the Texas Observer, which I got from commondreams.org, where you'll no doubt find more tributes today and tomorrow.

"She remained cheerful despite Texas politics. She emphasized the more hilarious aspects of both state and national government, and consequently never had to write fiction. She said, 'Good thing we’ve still got politics — finest form of free entertainment ever invented.'"


2 comments:

Dewy24 said...

Molly Ivins was one of the first people to defend Steve Walt after he published his controversial article on the pro-Israel lobby.


http://www.texasobserver.org/molly01.php

Dan Nolan said...

I believe it. They had a nice interview with her on democracynow!, which you can read here. I'd recommend downloading the mp3 of the interview to listen to her speak. Really a very endearing woman. She had a way of taking people to task ruthlessly but so that it didn't seem like they would be offended by it. And it wasn't a tricky, rhetorical style either. It was just her charm.