EDITORIAL Austin Amercan Statesman - Friday, February 02, 2007
Texas 'Force of Nature' was feisty to the end
Molly Ivins, depending upon one's point of view, was a fearless battler for truth and justice or an outrageous intruder on order and decorum. But there is no doubt that for nearly four decades in the world of Texas journalism and politics, she was a Force of Nature.
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After being educated at Smith College and Columbia University and starting her journalistic career in several workaday reporting jobs, Molly appeared in Austin in 1970 as one of the editors of the feisty Texas Observer.
In that era, when the Texas daily press was largely complacent and incurious, the Observer was often alone in exposing the surreal craziness and corruption of political life in Texas. It was at the Observer that Molly discovered her true polemic calling.
Her career, ignited by her powerful, witty and insightful writing at the Observer, went on to the New York Times, where reportedly her penchant for going barefoot in the newsroom and her liberal use of blue language earned her a ticket to the one-woman Rocky Mountain bureau, and her description of a local chicken-killing festival as a "gang pluck" earned her a ticket out the door.
Back she came to Texas, and a stellar career as a columnist, first with the late, great Dallas Times-Herald, then — after that journal's sad demise — the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, then as a columnist on her own, distributed around the world by Creators Syndicate, and as the author of numerous books exposing to the people the ways, the follies and the pomposities of the powerful.
Molly gave her life and career to that mission, in her words, "like dedicating your life to being a nun or some damn thing." As a political observer, her wit and insight — often hilarious, frequently poignant, often boiling with anger — raised her beyond the stratum of ordinary pundits to the ranks of Mark Twain and William Brann and Ambrose Bierce, those who, in Teddy Roosevelt's phrase, "stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord."
Molly led her words into that battle with tenacity, wit, acuity and an unquenchable optimism that the best things in human nature will not only survive but prevail. Her voice, though stilled, will be remembered as one of that rare breed of whom Twain wrote in 1888: "Irreverence is the champion of liberty, and its only sure defense."
