Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

August 30, 1944

Happy birthday to the late reporter, columnist, privacy-rights activist and all-around progressive shitkicker Molly Ivins.  A few gems from her voluminous print legacy, every one of them as relevant as ever:

1995: One of the things that concerns a lot of Americans lately is the increase in plain old nastiness in our political discussion. It comes from a number of sources, but Rush Limbaugh is a major carrier. I should explain that I am not without bias in this matter. I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.

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[W]e've bounced back from this same mistake before---the mistake of thinking that we can make ourselves safer if we just make ourselves less free. We get so scared of something---scared of communism or crime or drugs or illegal aliens---that we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing freedom. Never works. It's still true: the only thing to fear is fear itself.

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The American press has always had a tendency to assume that the truth must lie exactly halfway between any two opposing points of view. Thus, if the press presents the man who says Hitler is an ogre and the man who says Hitler is a prince, it believes it has done the full measure of its journalistic duty.

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9/1/05 after Katrina struck: Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now. To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

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December 2000: It seems to me that most of the media have a very odd take on the Clintons. You look at all those "scandals," and there is no there there. It's nonsense. Even the worst of it, the money-raising in '96, was so patently the problem of both parties. Shall we ever forget Haley Barbour explaining that sitting on the deck of a junk in the Hong Kong harbor with a Chinese businessman caused him to have not the slightest apprehension about accepting foreign money?

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Texas sign in front of a pharmacy: GENERIC PROZAC NOW IN, GOD BLESS AMERICA.

And, of course, her reaction to Pat Buchanan's 1992 Republican convention speech: "It probably sounded better in the original German."

If you haven't read the biography Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith, it's a really good account of her amazing yet far-from-charmed life that ended way too soon nine years ago at 62. And you can check out info on the documentary Raise Hell, directed by Janice Engel and now in post-production here. Even though she's no longer with us, her writing is still like Red Bull for the progressive soul.

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