Molly Ivins Dies

What a woman. I didn't know anything about her before I moved to Texas. I learned quick. You don't move to Texas and figure out how the Lege works in the same day--it takes time and I still don't think I totally get it. But Molly, with her irreverent, insightful, biting, compassionate, feisty, relentless, demanding and acidic wit helped me understand it as much as I do. And since W. was governor when I moved down here, she gave me the short course on understanding why he was going to make such a terrible president--anyone who understood W's governorship as explained by Molly Ivins would know better than to vote for him for president! It's too bad more people didn't listen to her. And I have this crazy feeling that even people who disagreed with every word that came out of her mouth, every opinion that she held so passionately had to like and respect her just a little bit. She was a true Texas original.

There are some people who just feel essential, people you don't want to imagine what the world would be like without them. Molly's one of them. I guess our job now is to be a little more like Molly ourselves so that she never fades away. I hope that she won't mind if I quote a few words from her in taking her leave--these are from her last column:

The president of the United States does not have the sense that God gave a duck -- so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba...
...This war is being prosecuted in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that less than 30 percent of the people want to maintain current troop levels. It is obscene and wrong for the president to go against the people in this fashion. And it's doubly wrong for him to increase U.S. troop levels in this hellhole by up to 20,000, as he reportedly will soon announce.
What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny?
Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?

The Austin American-Statesman article:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/01/1ivinsobit.html

The Texas Observer remembers:
http://www.texasobserver.org/

KUT remembers:
http://kut.org/items/show/7189

NPR remembers--includes interviews and Molly's commentaries:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7111009