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Badtux the Snarky PenguinIn a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin. Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped. |
Wednesday, January 31, 2007Molly Ivins, 1944-2007Last week Molly checked into the hospital. There the doctors found out there wasn't a damned thing they could do for her. Cancer's like that, once it manages to get out and spread around your body about all the doctors can do is give you chemotherapy to slow it down and hope it goes away on its own. Molly hit that point around this time last year. But the cancer didn't stop. And when that happens, it just eats you up until things stop working, and there's nothing the doctors can do to make'em start working again. So Monday she went home to die in her own bed.And so she did. Molly wasn't born in Texas, but she spent most of her early years there and became as Texan as any woman I ever saw. She was a take no prisoners no bullshit funny as hell by-god Texas woman with a heart as big as her adoptive state and a wit to match. She had a turn of the phrase every bit as funny as the late Lewis Grizzard, but where Grizzard was exploring the inner life of Americana, Molly headed straight for the big circus that was politics, especially Texas politics. Molly once explained that she'd once wanted to write fiction, but after covering the Texas Legislature for the Texas Observer, she couldn't figure out anything more outrageous that anybody would ever believe. So she went into political reporting instead. Whatever the reason, after a stint at the New York Times that ended disasterously when she described a communal chicken roast as a gang pluck, she headed back to her adoptive state and never left again. If life was fair, Molly would have been with us for another twenty years, and would have been no doubt tartly skewering another self-important politician from her rocking chair at the nursing home two weeks before she died just as she did two weeks ago. That was not, alas, to be. So while the Freepers celebrate that a woman who had more balls than all the Freepi combined has died (hey fuck-heads, why aren't you in Iraq?), I think I'll head out and go grab a beer. Somehow, that seems a helluva lot more fitting than anything else I can do to celebrate a woman who was a Texas original and a damned fine by-god American the way they ain't making many of nowdays in today's world of ball-less Freepi and an American public cowering in fear of some dumbass hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. Or as the fine folks at Editor and Publisher put it, Molly would have said "Hang in there, keep fightin' for freedom, raise more hell, and don't forget to laugh, too." Sounds like a damned fine idea to me. -- Badtux the Remembering Penguin Posted by: BadTux / 1/31/2007 10:51:00 PMComments:Sounds good to me. Tell you what. I'll buy you a beer, you buy me a Coke (I don't drink beer), and we'll have ourselves a virtual wake.# posted by Interrobang : 1/2/07 12:54 AM
Amen, brother BadTux.
Great post Tux. I really liked to read what she had to say.
If life was fair, Anne Richards wouldn't have lost the governor's office to Dubya Dipshit, she wouldn't have died of cancer at such a young age, and she would be our first Madam President.
Further proof that There Is No God: |
About Me
I am a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys. ArchivesApril 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / May 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / August 2007 /
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"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-- Plato
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