A Voice Dies

Molly Ivins died yesterday in Austin after three separate rounds battling breast cancer. She was only 62.

A wildly witty and caustic writer whose columns were carried in over 350 newspapers, she earlier had landed a prestigious job in 1976 at the New York Times. The following is excerpted from today's article:

She cut an unusual figure in The Times newsroom, wearing blue jeans, going barefoot and bringing in her dog, whose name was an expletive.

She quit The Times in 1982 after The Dallas Times Herald offered to make her a columnist. She took the job even though she loathed Dallas, once describing it as the kind of town “that would have rooted for Goliath to beat David.”

But the newspaper, she said, promised to let her write whatever she wanted. When she declared of a congressman, “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day,” many readers were appalled, and several advertisers boycotted the paper. In her defense, her editors rented billboards that read: “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” The slogan became the title of the first of her six books.


Ms. Ivins learned she had breast cancer in 1999 and was typically unvarnished in describing her treatments. “First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you,” she wrote. “I have been on blind dates better than that.”

*****

When I became a mother (and was told what a good young nurturer I was) and after I had been a book editor awhile (and had been told what a good young nurturer I was) I started reading the fiesty Molly Ivins. She had, after all, been a writer for the Minneapolis Tribune here in the Twin Cities.(I lived in the TC.) She lived in Texas. (I had lived in Texas.) I understood exactly what she meant about those Lone Star cowboys. It was such a relief to set aside my nurturing ways and read her lippy prose. I skipped out of work once to hear Ms. Ivins talk at the Radisson in St. Paul. I went alone and sat with a group of large-voiced and hearty women. It was great. I'll miss her.

(Top photo credit: Melanie West, melaniewestphotography.com.
Molly Ivins January 2007 photo (bottom) posted online at Common Ground Common Sense)