RIP Ms Ivins

(Photo courtesy: The Texas Observer)

Molly Ivins is dead. Here's the link to the story. Many good and heartfelt pieces have already appeared to mark her passing.

Read Joe Conason at Salon here - (subscription or clicking on an ad required). There's also an excellent obituary in The Guardian as well, here.

Many longer and better obituaries will be written about her - since many of the networks covered her death and even President Bush (a contemporary of hers from their high school in Midland, Texas) saw fit to weigh in with a few words, it is safe to assume many hypocritical things will be said too, but I do want to put down some thoughts on why I think the loss of this funny, witty, sharp lady is a loss for us all.

Why am I, a 35 year old Indian man who grew up in India, far from Austin Texas, who spent two years living in the USA (admittedy during a time that included the 2000 presidential election!) and who now lives in London, close to tears at the death of a writer who spent most of her professional life covering Texas politics?

Because after I discovered her through her incisive and funny biography of George W. Bush, ‘Shrub’ (co-authored with Lou Dubose), it was clear that here was a political writer who had an acutely tuned bullshit meter and had a killer sense of humour as well. That book made me gasp and laugh in equal measure and in later years, her comment on her old schoolmate (something along the lines of - Don’t complain America, we told you what he was like and you *still* voted for him!) seemed more prophetic than ever. After ‘Shrub’ I started reading every online column she ever wrote. I live in a different country now and have changed laptops ten times or more since 2000, but if it doesn’t have a link to her latest column and a local folder full of her older columns, it’s not mine.

Because the more I read her work, going back to the collections of her political writing, ‘Molly Ivins can’t say that, can she?’, ‘You’ve got to dance with them what brung you’ and ‘Nothin’ but good times ahead’ and ‘Who let the dogs in’, her pieces on politics were perceptive, funny, unashamedly liberal and always fierce in the defence of what she thought was right. I made sure I read ‘Bushwhacked’ (also co-written with Dubose) as soon as it came out - darker and grimmer, Molly simply catalogued what the Bush years were doing to her country and let the people in her book speak for themselves. When I came to the chapter on Priscilla Owen, one of Bush’s candidates for judicial confirmation, I nearly wept on a London bus.

Because she was a one-woman lesson in how to conduct political debate and the god of the putdown, but never descended into the illiterate name-calling that usually characterized her counterparts on the right. Her immortal take on the Texas legislature, the august body that gave the world Tom DeLay and George W. Bush, was simple - "Whee, here we go, the lege is back in session! And many a village is missing its idiot."

Because, during the last seven years, it often felt that apart from some lonely outposts of honesty such as Salon, hers was the only voice in the mainstream American print media that had the honesty to tell it like it is. She was the first and for a long time, the only person in the media to highlight the essential incompetence of George W Bush and his administration. Long before the rest of the media found and then ignored it as if it were irrelevant, she pointed out Dubya’s career of incredible incompetence, his habit of ‘failing upwards’ and being bailed out by ‘friends and family’ because his last name made them rich. While White House correspondents rolled over and played nice in the hope that the Republicans would tickle their tummies, talk show hosts were played for rubes by Bush, Cheney and gang and came back for seconds, when the rest of the media tried to avoid the taint of liberal bias by fawning over the liars and grilling liberals who dared to question, Ms Ivins kept writing her columns with humour and verve, often asking and answering to herself and to the rest of us - why bother? In November, we remembered why.

Because even as she was obviously counting her days down, she remained fierce to the end, openly scoffing at the sudden embrace of civility and good manners in politics by the Right that was curiously timed – after they had had their butts handed back to them in the November mid-term elections.

Because in the end, what you were left with was the memory of a woman who loved her country and countrymen deeply and passionately and because she believed in the power of human beings to do good, she used her considerable intelligence and enormous wit to keep nudging, poking and goading them to do so.

In a column by a writer in the Guardian, Simon Hoggart, who knew her, I found out a few years ago that she had cancer. That explained the gaps between columns that grew longer but also triggered a sense of apprehension for the health of someone I had never met and would not meet . Somehow, at a gut level, I loved this lady and wished she would keep writing at least as long as I lived. I wrote her the occasional mail about her column - always wishing her well and hoping she was well - I don’t know if she ever got them, but I hope she did.

I’m happy she lived long enough to see the poisonous DeLay discredited and his machine in shambles, Bush and his administration in disarray and Cheney exposed for the bullying fraud that he is. Long after the hate merchants of the right-wing are turning to dust six feet under and their reputations even further underground, we will still be laughing and crying at Molly Ivins' work - I can't think of a greater tribute to her.

But who will speak truth to power now? Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann - your time is now.