Posted on 01/31/2007 3:53:45 PM PST by lunarbicep
Molly Ivins, whose biting columns mixed liberal populism with an irreverent Texas wit, died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at her home in Austin after an up-and-down battle with breast cancer she had waged for seven years. She was 62.
Ms. Ivins, the Star-Telegram’s political columnist for nine years ending in 2001, had written for the New York Times, the Dallas Times-Herald and Time magazine and had long been a sought-after pundit on the television talk-show circuit to provide a Texas slant on issues ranging from President Bush’s pedigree to the culture wars rooted in the 1960s.
"She was magical in her writing," said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ms. Ivins at the newspaper’s Austin bureau in 1992, a few months after the Times-Herald ceased publication. "She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn’t hurt so bad."
A California native who moved to Houston as a young child with her family, Ms. Ivins was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. Two years later after enduring a radical mastectomy and rounds of chemotherapy, Ms. Ivins was given a 70 percent chance of remaining cancer-free for five years. At the time, she said she liked the odds.
But the cancer recurred in 2003, and again last year. In recent weeks, she had suspended her twice-weekly syndicated column, allowing guest writers to use the space while she underwent further treatment. She made a brief return to writing in mid-January, urging readers to resist President Bush’s plan to increase the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq. She likened her call to an old-fashioned "newspaper crusade."
"We are the people who run this country," Ms Ivins said in the column published in the Jan. 14 edition of the Star-Telegram. "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," she continued. "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. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge."
She ended the piece by endorsing the peace march in Washington scheduled for Saturday. 01-27 "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!' " she wrote.
The spice of Texas
Born Mary Tyler Ivins on Aug. 30, 1944, in Monterey, Calif., Ms. Ivins was raised in the upscale River Oaks section of Houston. She earned her journalism degree at elite Smith College in Massachusetts in 1965. From there she ventured to Minnesota, taking a job as a police reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune.
Growing weary of the winters in the Upper Great Lakes and missing the spice of Texas food and its politics, Ms. Ivins moved to Austin to become co-editor of the Texas Observer, long considered the state’s liberal conscience.
Nadine Eckhardt, the former wife of the late Texas novelist Billy Lee Bramer and who later married former U.S. Rep. Bob Eckhardt of Houston, said Ivins soon made herself a fixture in the Austin political and cocktail party scene in the early 1970s.
"That’s where she became the Molly Ivins as we’ve come to know her," said Eckhardt, an Ivins friend for nearly four decades. "The Observer had such wonderful writers doing such wonderful stories at the time, and Molly was always right in the middle of everything."
Her writing flair caught the attention of the New York Times, which hired her to cover city hall, then later moved her to the statehouse bureau in Albany. Later, she was assigned to the Times’ Rocky Mountain bureau in Denver.
Even though she wrote the Times’ obituary for Elvis Presley in 1977, Ms. Ivins said later that she and the sometimes stodgy Times proved to be a mismatch. In a 2002 interview with the Star-Telegram, Ms. Ivins recalled that she would write about something that "squawked like a $2 fiddle" only to have a Times editor rewrite it to say "as an inexpensive instrument." Ms Ivins said she would mention a "beer belly" and The Times would substitute "a protuberant abdomen.”
So Ms. Ivins returned to Austin in 1982 to become a columnist for the Dallas Times-Herald and reconnecting with such political figures as Ann Richards, who would later become governor, and Bob Bullock, then the hard-drinking state comptroller who later wielded great power as lieutenant governor.
Trademark language
The column provided Ms. Ivins the freedom to express her views with the colorful language that would become her trademark. She called such figures as Ross Perot, former U.S. Sen. John Tower and ex-Gov. Bill Clements "runts with attitudes." As a candidate for governor, George W. Bush became "Shrub," a nicknamed she never tired of using.
Surprised became "womperjawed." A visibly angry person would "throw a walleyed fit."
Ms. Ivins, who was single and had no children, told readers about her first bout with cancer in a matter-of-fact afterword in an otherwise ordinary column.
"I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I fully intend to recover," she wrote on Dec. 14, 1999. "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."
Ms. Ivins authored three books and co-authored a fourth. She was a three-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and had served on Amnesty International’s Journalism Network, but the iconoclastic writer often said that her two highest honors were being banned from the conservative campus of Texas A&M University and having the Minneapolis police name their mascot pig after her when she covered the department as a reporter during one of her first jobs in the newspaper business.
Funeral arrangements were pending.
No tears shed for her demise. Actually there's a little smirk on my face. She name W. "shrub"
She's a Commie/Socialist (green party) as is Jim Hightower of Texas. Amen
Marsha Ivins deserves NO respect, whether in life or after life. Be real.
But Ivins was NOT civilized, IMO. She was a rude, crude, witch with a very foul mouth.
Well said.
The Womens Libbers who came of age in the '60s and '70s were told they didn't need a man and kids would hinder their career. So, they stayed single and childless. Hence, they end up old, lonely, angry and bitter.
If it were up to me, I'd deny their very existence. Why let my free speech be clouded by what the garbage dump does?
Amen. And, BTW, prayers for her are too late. "It is appointed unto men once to die but after this, the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27)
She wasn't evil, she didn't kill anyone or lead mass genocide. She was a writer who wrote what she felt. She is no different than Ann Coulter, just another opinion.
Grow the hell up.
I am reading posts from many Freepers and alot are saying they did not agree with her but I am not seeing any ill will or hatefull posts. Could you immagine if GW was to pass the hate that would be posted? I have been shown that we have class and are respectful of someones passing.
I have a mammo every year now. Doc told me I only had to have a pap every other year. Sure hope they get that nice imaging tool soon, so we don't have to get squashed anymore!
I don't like comparing a leader's death to a progagandist's, but its fair to say that the DUmmies will rejoice in any Republican's death. I can say that because I visit the forums often. There's more hatred and projection than logic and constitutional ethics.
I agree this shows who really cares about free speach.
Vaya con diablos.
Isn't that the truth. One can only hope that she made her peace with Him before she left and it's too late, but judging from her last commentary, I doubt it.
Thank GOD! She did not procreate.
Interesting title. I guess 8 years of presidency is a short political life, in addition to the years as governor of Texas? Color me puzzled...
RIP Molly
Such a sad day for her family. God bless her and her family. Hopefully she found peace in God's loving arms.
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