By Staff
Brassy, sassy Molly Ivins was everything a columnist is supposed to be.
Unabashedly liberal and irreverent, this populist and tart-tongued Texan was never timid in the presence of power.
She went to bat for underdogs and lampooned the wealthy who made excuses for injustice.
She died Jan. 31 at 62 from the breast cancer she had overcome twice since 1999. Cancer, she said, "can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person."
In 1999 her pointed pen wrote presciently in "Shrub," even before the 2000 White House election, that "for an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard-ass – at a guess to make up for being an upper-class white boy. But it's also a common Texas male trait. Someone should probably be worrying how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein…"
She believed in people exercising their rights and wrote in September 2005: "This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, 'I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics … I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, 'Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people.' Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people."
She consistently railed against the war: "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. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and are trying to get them out of there … We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it now!' "
Her views on gun control she cleverly summed up this way: "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. General substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."
Ivins' life reminds us that journalism is supposed to be brave, direct and a catalyst to thought, debate and action.
She held politicians' feet to the fire, never backed down and did it in a witty way.
She is missed already, but we can keep alive her challenge to "keep fighting for freedom and justice … but don't forget to have fun doin' it."