Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins died today. She was a collumnist for the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I became aware of her during college as a journalism student. Back then, her best collected works were "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?" and "You Got To Dance With Them What Brung You." She skewered the Texas Legislature and right-wingers and sometimes the lefties. Her folksy style was that of a redneck H.L. Menken. She was one of those collumnists who bashed people who deserved bashing - corporate whores, political hacks and idiots of every stripe. When I read a Molly Ivins collumn, I was reading a sassy Texas lady who told it like it was.
Her work on Bush, "Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush" was a revealing look at Bush when he ran for president in 2000. Molly Ivins' book exposed Bush as the inept bungler and yes-man he was, a daddy's boy who sought approval and lived in the shadow of his famous father. It was that book that drove me to vote for Gore in 2000. Too bad more Americans didn't read it, as that book chronicled the kind of person Bush was - connected, wealthy and clueless.
Molly Ivins was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 and suffered a recurrence over the past few years. She'd undergone chemotherapy at the time of her death.
So Molly, I'll raise a tall longneck Lone Star beer for you. You deserve it, ol' gal.