RIP Molly Ivins

And me in a part of the country where you can't get a Shiner Bock.

 

Very nice obit in the Times (where she once worked).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01ivins.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=94d0968bd76dc0d2&hp&ex=1170392400&partner=homepage

I liked this:

"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.

While she drew important writing assignments, like covering the Son of Sam killings and Elvis Presley’s death, she sensed she did not fit in and complained that Times editors drained the life from her prose. “Naturally, I was miserable, at five times my previous salary,” she later wrote. “The New York Times is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.”

 

From her final column, re: George Bush proclaiming he is the "decision-maker":

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous."

 

I feel the same way... I met her several years back and told her that I agree with almost nothing she wrote, but still enjoyed reading her... I think she appreciated the compliment...

62 is way too young... This really sucks...

RIP

 

Very sad. I gave my aspiring journalist niece a couple of her books.

I did agree with most of what she said. She always got it write on the head.

 

Nothing to add but agreement to all expressed on the thread.

I did play softball against her once when she was on the Times Herald team in a media league. An athlete she wasn't, but it was fun.

 

I worked with Molly Ivins over 20 years ago and she, plus Skip Bayless, was hardly ever in the Times Herald newsroom.
They'd get the material into the editors whatever way possible, and were iconic even then.
Both were well-above-average writers.
RIP Molly.
Lots of folks who were in Dallas long before I was marveled over her work.
She was definitely a ballsey wag.

 

She wrote a few months back a column attacking those corporate drones and what they are doing to this business. Best thing I've ever seen. I wanted to appoint her as Journalism CEO.

She talked about how the non-profit route was the only way this industry would be saved.

And she's right. Because the industry is led by mean-spirited, greedy, journalism-ignorant people that could give a shit about press freedom or quality of work.

 

I think I know the column to which you refer, but could you dig up a link?

That needs to go up here posthaste.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0324-33.htm

Here's one.

 

Read that when it was first published.

Words to live by:

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter—nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened. Or, as author-journalist Curtis Wilkie puts it, “Unless you can cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you shouldn’t be allowed to cover a presidential campaign.”