A Sad Farewell to an American Great
This is for Molly. With apologies to W. H. Auden, for changing the gender within his poem:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
From a September 2006 AP story:
She’s not just the leftist agitator with the 6-foot frame, she’s the leftist agitator with the 6-foot frame from Texas, and she never lets people forget it.
She’s published six books, among them four best-sellers.
Humor sustains her.
“I’ve always found it easier to be funny than to be serious,’ she said, seven years after she was first diagnosed with the cancer that then gave her less than a 5 percent chance of surviving.
This is her third bout with the disease. Chemotherapy has claimed her thick red locks. She’s feeling OK, on the whole, despite the balance problem and constipation.
She has yet to learn if the chemo and radiation treatments have finally eradicated the cancer cells from her body.
If she appeared a bit fatigued during the visit to her home in Austin’s trendy Travis Heights neighborhood, who could blame her. She was grappling with Richards’ death. And she’d returned less than a week before from an 11-day, 227-mile raft trip through the Grand Canyon, a trip which she said reduced her ego “to the size of a grain of sand.”
Her loyal assistant, Betsy Moon, had warned the 16 people on the trip that she was “a fragile case.” So you might have thought Ivins was the empress of China.
“People would bring me food and drink, and put up my tent,” Ivins said.
Then she laughed heartily. She hadn’t asked Moon to elicit sympathy, but she wasn’t complaining.
“I’m not above using cancer as the world’s greatest excuse,” she said.
She was born Molly Tyler Ivins in Monterey, Calif., but she tells people she was raised in “East Texas.”
Her father, Jim Ivins, a corporate lawyer, was a conservative Republican.
“She was going to be anything he wasn’t,” her bother Andy Ivins said. Father and daughter argued about civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the women’s movement.
Molly Ivins attended her mother’s and grandmother’s alma mater, Smith College, where she wrote for the student newspaper and where she read Betty Friedan’s just-released “The Feminine Mystique,” which was sweeping the campus. She spent a year in Paris before graduating and two summers interning at the Houston Chronicle, where she wrote up street closings and bridal news and recalls accidentally marrying off one bride to her father and writing that another had earned a “B.O.” degree.
The mishaps weren’t enough to keep her out of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, or from landing her first job at the Minneapolis Tribune, where she spent three years.
She returned home in 1970 to cover the Texas Legislature, became co-editor of the biweekly leftist newsmagazine The Texas Observer, gained some national prominence and then was hired away by the New York Times. Six years later she was fired by the same paper, a feat she brags about, because the top editor, A.M Rosenthal, didn’t feel she showed “due respect and deference to the great dignity of the New York Times,” Ivins recalled.
Returning home once more, she landed a job as a columnist and has stayed true to her roots ever since.
She writes from home, in the company of her black standard poodle, Fanny Brice. She never married and has no children. Her favorite targets: Republicans, Republicans and Republicans.
A year ago, she announced she would not vote for Hillary Clinton, and also had sharp words for the Beltway Democratic leaders. And here she attacks the compromise on torture. No blogger made that case so well.
If you ever heard her speak, while her wit was sharp as steel, her delivery and voice had the grace of silk. It’s been said that ‘diplomacy is when someone tells you to “Go to hell” and makes it sound like an enjoyable place to visit.’ Molly was no diplomat, but face-to-face in a debate, I’m sure her opponents felt like they’d just gotten beat up by Audrey Hepburn or Shirley Temple.
Consider what she wrote in September, the same month her friend Ann Richards also fell to the only foe that ever defeated Molly.
The earthy Texas humor in her writing gave way to an exquisite grace that was utterly disarming. Listen to her speak of Tom Delay, to understand what I mean about the grace in the way she spoke.
Teens develop mad crushes on rock stars and actors. I spent much of my adult life mad about Molly. It didn’t matter that she was tall and large and fit no conventional definition of beautiful. Because when she smiled, nobody smiled wider. She was, to me, the greatest columnist that ever lived. I will miss her.
My condolences to her family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, employers, every liberal in America, to Texas, to America itself and to the world.
If anything, I’m sure Molly would be about laughter now, not sadness. And encouraging us to fight on in her stead.
Sure, I’m sad, but there’s no time to wallow. In her honor, go needle a Republican. Then let’s go Chimpeach the Shrub.
Update: Daniel DiRito at Thought Theater has Molly on YouTube, in The Dildo Diaries.
Also, you might want to consider a donation to fight breast cancer, via the walking group - The Titsy Chicks - led by my longtime friend, Mary.
Her REAL university, where she was the magna cum laudest, was the Texas Observer, where they’ve put up a memorial and many of her writings.
And this is especially rich, from her NY Times obituary: “In 1976, her writing, which she said was often fueled by “truly impressive amounts of beer,” landed her a job at The New York Times. She cut an unusual figure in The Times newsroom, wearing blue jeans, going barefoot and bringing in her dog, whose name was an expletive.”
Hah!
January 31st, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Texas, you’ve lost the better part of your state…
Molly Ivins has died. I’m surprised at how this affects me. She was a wonderful woman, wise and funny, and this is a great loss to the nation. Whenever I’m tempted to just write off the whole state of Texas……
January 31st, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I share your sadnesses. Poor Texas…poor America…
Let’s win this one for her!
January 31st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Thanks, Molly, for everything. You will be missed.
February 1st, 2007 at 6:43 am
Another great Texas Liberal is lost. I only hope someone half as talented and insightful can try to fill her shoes, because we’ll them now, more than ever.
February 1st, 2007 at 6:44 am
kevin,
thanks for this.
like you, i had a mad crush on the girl. brave and super smart and screamingly funny.
today is the first day i’ll miss her. but every day going forward, i’ll miss her more.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:04 am
Damn. I “met” Molly Ivins through the column about her dog (the expletive, by the way, was Shithead, who answered only to Shit, and she had the most hilarious story about running after the dog in Manhattan, shouting, “Shit! Shit!” at the top of her lungs). I promptly went out and bought her book Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, and I became a life-long fan of Texas politics.
Which is why I opposed the Shrub even before anyone else outside of Austin had a sniff at what he was about. Twas Molly warned me.
February 1st, 2007 at 8:49 am
Molly Ivins has died…
Sad news. Political Commentator Molly Ivins has died.
Here is a wonderful tribute.
I’ve always loved her columns, now I’ll have to read her books….
February 1st, 2007 at 9:27 am
She actually looks great bald, too.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:00 am
[…] Upon hearing the news that Molly Ivins has died, I’m depressed. I really only discovered her a couple of years ago, but she was a breath of fresh air and I loved her wit and self deprecation. Sad. […]
February 1st, 2007 at 10:06 am
RIP, Molly. Your grateful nation salutes you!
February 1st, 2007 at 10:26 am
farewell Molly…
If you’ve read this blog long enough, you’ve seen links to the writings of Molly Ivins. She’s always been on of my favorite pundits (and there aren’t many of those) because she did two things: she cut straight to the……
February 1st, 2007 at 10:31 am
Beautiful memorial, Kevin; thanks. I miss Molly more than I can express at the moment. Who will pick up the banner now? Ten thousand of us could never replace her, but if in death as in life she inspires ten thousand to go forward in the work of civilizing our nation and reclaiming its meaning, you may be sure she’s somewhere smiling about it.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:45 am
Kevin ~
I enjoyed your entire piece about Molly, and I clicked on many things you put here as reminders of just how great she was! It is a sad day. Losing her creates a great void. You can stand up as “one” who gave her a tribute she so deserves. Thank You, kevin!
February 1st, 2007 at 10:54 am
Wow Kevin , that was a beautiful tribute…and dead on…I like to picture Molly is now with Ann sharing a cool drink and calling Bush an Absolute Ass….I will miss her so much…I truly hope that all of us write more and better and Raise Hell in her Honor….
February 1st, 2007 at 10:59 am
I read that Molly wanted memorial donations in her name to go to the Texas ACLU.
Blessed be girl. You fought the good fight.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:05 am
I’m having a hard time getting over this, too, at the moment. I live in Austin and, though I didn’t know Molly personally, I saw her occasionally in local restaurants and was enlivened by the knowledge that she lived so close. Aside from her humane, ethical political stances and humor, her refined grasp of language is something I will also miss, and that is something I fear will not be replaced, since younger Americans seem to have neither an awareness nor an appreciation of proper grammar and concise phrasing. In addition to writing on more urgent topics, Molly used her expertise in language to ruthlessly lambast the phrasings of the likes of George H. W. and George W. Bush with a unique aplomb. Another idea about what to do right now in her honor is to donate or subscribe to the excellent Texas political magazine she wrote for and supported for so long: the Texas Observer at www.texasobserver.org.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I first heard Molly speak in the fall of 1988. She was an even better speaker than she was a writer, which, if you’ve read her, doesn’t seem possible.
February 1st, 2007 at 5:59 pm
As per my earlier post to Mrs Ivins wishing her the best in recovering from her cancer, I now learn she has lost that battle, My heart is in critical care and will need respite care.
The Jewel of the Nation has been silenced by a malignant bug that has taken so many of our greeeeeeeeeeat women, I weep with the thought that we shall no longer be graced with her prescence and her all encompassing wit.
Her books should be listed in the Library of Congress as mandatory reading for all who enjoy this great experiment in democracy. FOR in her writings is she not the embodiment of the of Democracy in action?
Her tools of the trade are the hallmarks of the 1st amendment in action,and she did it so well, the nation and women lose a voice that is irreplaceable, and her shoes?(who could ever fill them) goodbye sweet molly, may the good lord enjoy your humor as we have.
I write this salutation with tears flowing down my cheeks, for truly a warm, loving ,intelligent,witty,maddening woman has left this world a better with her addition to the whole fabric of our nation. (good bye MOLLY and GOD speed, and forever may you walk softly in the shadow of god, your protector.
Michael H Dittamore
Gold Bar Wa.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:05 pm
thank you, Kevin.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Molly was a true American Patriot.
boy, are we gonna miss her.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Great tribute. I’ve been reading Molly for years, thinking “You go, girl!” many times.
Who do we now turn to for the original pithy phrase when describing the representatives of the people who have forgotten what they were elected for. Can’t you just see Molly and Ann, enjoy julips and looking down at GWB, saying “We’re HEEEER, waiting, George!”, with two of the best smiles, anywhere, on their faces. You go, girls!
February 1st, 2007 at 11:09 pm
My own tribute to her was shorter and I expect not as good, but I wanted to share this part:
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:15 pm
She wasn’t the last Texas liberal, not by a long shot, but by God she was the funniest. And she managed to be funny about the bleakest subject in the world–the moral and intellectual midgets who run this country. And all she had to do was, as she said, “tell the truth on ‘em.”
Someone else already suggested this, but in case you missed it, a good way to honor her memory is to subscribe to her beloved journalistic Alma Mater, the Texas Observer:
February 4th, 2007 at 1:10 am
I am a writer/designer/media jammer and live about half a block from Ms. Ivins. In 2004 when I tangled with Bill O’Reilly and the FOX Noise Channel legal department over my “FAUX NEWS” and “O’Reilly Youth” tee shirts and prevailed, thanks to the NYC ACLU and Keith Olbermann, no one was more tickled than she. With her trademark laugh, she told me that she thought it was “a hoot.” Talk about affirmation! : )
God Bless you, Molly. Happy Trails.
February 4th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
farewell Molly…
If you’ve read this blog long enough, you’ve seen links to the writings of Molly Ivins. She’s always been one of my favorite pundits (and there aren’t many of those) because she did two things: she cut straight to the……
May 21st, 2009 at 5:13 pm
[…] Kevin Hayden, The American Street: A Sad Farewell to an American Great Teens develop mad crushes on rock stars and actors. I spent much of my adult life mad about Molly. It didn’t matter that she was tall and large and fit no conventional definition of beautiful. Because when she smiled, nobody smiled wider. She was, to me, the greatest columnist that ever lived. […]