a 'sorry' sack of shiite.
Posted on 07/22/2005 7:03:24 AM PDT by SJackson
Ask the Monitor to describe the columnist Molly Ivins while standing on one foot and there would be no fumbling for words. Molly Ivins is a nasty piece of work. The rest is commentary.
Ivins, a Texan who`s described herself as "a left-wing, aging Bohemian journalist," delivers her hard left views in prose distinguished by mean-spirited potshots marinated in a somewhat labored cornpone populism.
According to the iconoclastic author Florence King, Ivins is a "professional Good Ole Girl....Watching her go through her paces is like watching Ona Munson, who played Belle Watling in ‘Gone With the Wind,` doing an imitation of Spencer Tracy playing Clarence Darrow in ‘Inherit the Wind.` That`s a lot of wind."
King is more than a disinterested observer — she wrote those words in a 1995 column for The American Enterprise titled "Molly Ivins, Plagiarist." Ivins, you see, had paid King the ultimate writer`s tribute by appropriating several passages of King`s work — though in some cases without proper attribution. King acknowledged that Ivins had on certain occasions cited her as a source, "but never where it counts. She credits me on minor observations, but when the subject is politics — her turf — she plagiarizes me."
Ivins apologized to King, saying she was "deeply ashamed," but characterized her literary transgression as one of sloppiness rather than premeditated theft. "I have no idea how the indirect quotations got scrambled up," she told the Washington Post at the time of the controversy. "I thought I had credited her every time I used her."
(Accusations of plagiarism were directed at Ivins again a few years later when a Texas publication, the Fort Worth Weekly, said she`d taken a story from its pages and misrepresented it as her own.)
The latest contretemps involving our Good Ole Girl were sparked by a column of hers at the end of June in which she insisted her opposition to the invasion of Iraq was based on her unimpeachable patriotism — and then proceeded to deliver herself of the following remarkable statement: "I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did." (Emphasis added)
Conservative bloggers had a field day with Ivins`s lunacy, and in a matter of days Ivins issued an apology that only served to raise new questions about her honesty and integrity:
"In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong.
"The only problem is figuring out by how large a factor I was wrong. I had been keeping an eye on civilian deaths in Iraq for a couple of months, waiting for the most conservative estimates to creep over 20,000, which I had fixed in my mind as the number of Iraqi civilians Saddam had killed....
"Ha! I could hardly have been more wrong, no matter how you count Saddam`s killing of civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, Hussein killed several hundred thousand of his fellow citizens.... Saddam`s regime left 271 mass graves, with more still being discovered....There have been estimates as high as 1 million civilians killed by Saddam, though most agree on the 300,000 to 400,000 range, making my comparison to 20,000 civilian dead in this war pathetically wrong....
"My sincere apologies. It is unforgivable of me not to have checked. I am so sorry."
Did you catch Ivins`s confession that she "had been keeping an eye on civilian deaths in Iraq...waiting for the most conservative estimates to creep over 20,000"? So fixated was Ivins on bad-mouthing the U.S. that she was itching for the chance to portray the American military as a greater killer of Iraqis than the murdering despot the Americans had forcibly removed.
And when Ivins thought she finally had her opening, she recklessly rushed into print with something so outrageously untrue that she had no choice but to grovel once the gravity of her error became clear. Agree or disagree with her politics, can any serious person take her seriously?
"Sorry, I was drunk."
I live in Texas and I agree, SHE SURE IS SORRY!~ Sorry excuse for a human being.
Further, can any serious news publication continue to purchase her columns? Of course not the serious ones.
"Sorry that I'm me."
Preposterous. Saddam's civilian death toll has been widely known to be in the hundreds of thousands since the first Gulf War. Anyone purporting to be journalist who doesn't know that is either a medacious liar or far too stupid to be let loose behind a keyboard (in Ivins' case, it's probably both...)
Ivins is to responsible journalism what Joe Stalin was to the cause of human rights in the world. That demented old sow wouldn't know a well-written article if it jumped out of her fat ass and introduced itself with a business card.
Ivins is more like Roy Munson from "Kingpin".
Molly invented the nickname "Shrub" for the President.
***Or DID she?????*****
Poor Molly,
Born with a hand-me-down foot in her mouth.
I just want y'all to know I'm from Texas, and I'm ashamed that Molly Ivins is from Texas.
She's a perfect example.
Exactly so Molly Ivins is a washed out menopausal alcoholic whose idea of 'cutting edge humor' is calling GW 'shrub' time and time again and hoping nobody notices the repetition
"According to the iconoclastic author Florence King, Ivins is a "professional Good Ole Girl....Watching her go through her paces is like watching Ona Munson, who played Belle Watling in ‘Gone With the Wind,` doing an imitation of Spencer Tracy playing Clarence Darrow in ‘Inherit the Wind.` That`s a lot of wind." "
LoL
Well I can tell you that Not My "Ma Richards" did NOT create the "Born with a silver foot in his mouth" line. It was written for her by Lily Tomlin's gagwriter.
When politians' speeches go the way of a Leno monologue, the state of politics in this country are in decline.
ping
Ivins, a Texan who`s described herself as "a left-wing, aging Bohemian journalist,"
If Ivins is "a left-wing, aging Bohemian journalist", what does that make Helen Thomas? Maureen Dowd? Any of the other NAG HAG "journalists"????
No wonder she's such a devotee of Joe Biden. I remember a column she wrote about Dan Quayle (one of about 2 columns by her that I have ever read all the way through). This was during the democrat primary flap where her buddy Joe got into a little bit of hot water for lifting significant portions of prior speeches by Kennedy's, British labor leaders, and passing them off as his own words (or "what's on my mind"). Naturally, even before the age of Google and Lexus-Nexus searches, enough people remembered the origins of those speeches that he was quickly revealed as the opportunistic plagiarizer that he was. So here comes Molly to his defense.
It seems that Dan Quayle was speaking somewhere and he began his speech with a little self-depracating joke that he told in the first person, i.e. as if the humorous story had happened to him. Obviously, he didn't invent the joke; it had been around the block a time or two (like most jokes). Also, and equally obviously, he did not attribute the joke to whomever he had previously heard tell the joke (because nobody gives attribution on jokes -- they are jokes for crying out loud). But Molly -- who you would think would know a thing or two about plagiarism based on her own experience in the area -- decided that this failure to give proper attribution for the joke was every bit the plagiaristic offense as Little Joe's adventures on the campaign trail. She further articulated that anybody that wouldn't challenge VP Quayle on his failure to properly attribute his little anecdotal joke yet criticized Joey's plagiarism was a big fat hypocrite.
The funny thing is that ever since that column I have known Molly was a complete idiot, and everything I've ever heard her say since then has reinforced that impression.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.