The Texas Observer

January 31 is the two-year anniversary of the death of Molly Ivins, the Observer’s former editor, reporter, columnist and guiding spirit. To mark the date, we offer these reflections from Betsy Moon, Ivins’ former assistant and “chief of stuff” from 2001 to 2007.

The question I have been asked most often during the last two years is, “What would Molly think about this?” Molly Ivins would have loved this election. She would have loved the beautiful sight of “We the People” finally stepping up to become the real deciders. She would have loved the drama, the comedy and the characters.

We miss her regular twice-weekly comments and insights, and want to hear her dissect, slice and dice, and make fun of the events and revelations of the week. No one could do it like she did. She made us feel like we weren’t alone. She made us want to be our better selves and stand up and use our power. She would be so proud that we finally woke up and worked to make this happen.

In many of her lectures, she would exhort her audience to believe in their power. She’d say: “I hear people whine: ‘I can’t do anything. I’m just one person.’ ” Then she’d lift her head high and quote from the Declaration of Independence in her Barbara Jordon voice and remind them, “As a U.S. citizen, you have more political power than most humans who’ve ever lived on this earth.”

In fact, we know how she would have felt, because she was as prescient about this election as she was about all the tragedies of the Bush years. Carlton Carl, CEO/publisher at Molly’s beloved Observer, recalls her saying after Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, “You know … that young man could be president some day.”

Before Obama announced his candidacy, Chicago Magazine asked a number of luminaries if they thought he should run. Opinions varied. Molly was succinct and direct, and with her usual wit and certainty said: “Yes, he should run. He’s the only Democrat with any Elvis to him.”

And, in her column on Jan. 20, 2006, she said: “It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief. If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator … with the guts to do it.” She was speaking about Gene McCarthy then, but it might as well have been Barack Obama.
She’d be so happy that her beloved Constitution (she donated one speech a month to groups working to preserve and maintain the First Amendment) is in safer hands — that some of the worst things ever done in our name are over. She’d love that Obama began his community organizing knowing that power lies in all of us united, and that he continues to remind us that we are the deciders.

I saw and heard many interviews after Nov. 4 and during inaugural celebrations with people who all said they wished their mother or father or grandmother or friend had been here to witness this history in the making. Tens of thousands of us wished that Molly could have been here to see it.

I choose to believe she and all of them did see it because they live on in our hearts, minds and actions. Molly is honored with awards, lectures and scholarships in her name. Many of her readers formed “Pots & Pans” brigades, following the advice in her final two columns to take to the streets and demand an end to the Iraq war. She always signed her books and her letters with, “Raise more hell,” and you can make her live on by doing just that.

She lives in everyone who took courage in who they are and what they thought when they read her columns and books, and knew they weren’t alone and they weren’t crazy. She lives on in the Observer and the ACLU (aclu.org), to whom she left a large portion of her estate.

In a letter for the ACLU, she says: “I don’t have any children, so I’ve decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin. I figure freedom and justice beat having my name in marble any day. Besides, if there is another life after this one, think how much we’ll get to laugh watching it all.”

Ken Bunting, an old friend of Molly’s who’s now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said of Molly on Election Day, “I’m not much of a believer, but I think our friend is looking down and smiling right along with Barack’s grandma.” You know, I think he is right.

“Help us keep this rare and independent flower of journalism blooming.” — Molly Ivins

Photo by Dave McNeely

“You know,” she said after we met him. “That young man could be President some day.”

“What?” I said. “Are you crazy? Not in our lifetimes.” We both knew what I meant. After all, that young man was black. And she and I had both grown up white and liberal in a segregated Houston with “Colored” restrooms, “Whites Only” water fountains, and lily-white lunch counters. In the mid-1960s we had both worked on The Houston Chronicle, where there were a grand total of two black faces in the newsroom, and where we had to plead with and cajole our editors to let us do a long story on poverty in the city. There wasn’t much coverage of the black community back then that didn’t involve crime.

She was Molly Ivins, my dear friend of 45 years before she died in 2007, having had an illustrious career as a reporter, editor of The Texas Observer, and widely syndicated columnist.

“That young man” was Barack Obama. The occasion was the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where Obama had given the keynote address.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Molly should have said to me.

We both saw stardom in that young man. But Molly saw more. Molly saw a time when the United States of America could put aside racial division and elect a black person President.

I fear I still saw those “Colored” and “Whites Only” signs, the fire hoses and police dogs, and Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”

Well, it did happen in my lifetime. Sadly, not in Molly’s.

Looking at this picture taken by our old friend Dave McNeely (the veteran reporter who was there with us in those Houston Chronicle days), I thought about that night in Boston a little over four years ago. I thought about Molly’s hopeful words.

How she would have loved last night. How she would have loved to hear: “President-Elect Barack Obama.”

Ken Bunting, another old friend who’s now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said of Molly by email this morning, “I’m not much of a believer, but I think our friend is looking down and smiling right along with Barack’s grandma.”

You know, I think he is right.

As the Senate’s proposed $700 billion bailout bill goes thudding down to ignominious defeat—an hour after John McCain rushed to claim credit for its success—it’s worth remembering another vote, in another time, that just may have helped get us where we are today.

On September 23, Jay Bookman from the Atlanta Journal Constitution reprinted a Molly Ivins column on the 10th anniversary of its original publication. In it, Ivins argues that proposed deregulation of the banking industry is going to lead to “financial disaster.”

Watching Washington Mutual and Wachovia’s catastrophic collapses, it’s easy to forget that way back, oh, about 10 years ago, things seemed pretty good. The economy was going through one of the biggest booms in our history. People had savings accounts. Students could get loans. Major banks weren’t failing. And the Senate met to vote on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a proposal to, in Ivins’ synopsis, “eliminate barriers between banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies.”

Her critique is worth quoting at some length. “This sets up financial holding companies that offer all three types of services simultaneously. The most obvious risk is that a blunder in the insurance or brokerage end of the business could bring down a bank, putting insured deposits at risk. The taxpayers, of course, then wind up with the tab, as we did with the savings-and-loan mess.

“So what we have here is (1) increasing likelihood of a recession dead ahead, (2) banks already looking at serious trouble because of stupid lending policies, and (3) a bill that effectively further deregulates the banks and hurts consumers, making it even more likely that banks will get themselves into serious trouble . . . Veto, veto, veto.”

Almost a year after that column, as the bill went to a vote in the House, U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan, and now chairman of the Commerce Committee) stood before the House to warn that the act would create “a group of institutions which are too big to fail.

“Not only are they going to be big banks, they are going to be big everything, because the are going to be in securities and insurance, in issuance of stocks and bonds and underwriting, and they are also going to be in banks . . . Taxpayers are going to be called upon to cure the failures we are creating tonight, and it is going to cost a lot of money, and it is coming. Just be prepared for those events.”

Nine days later, on November 12, 1999, President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), co-sponsor of the act, was there to claim credit.

“The world changes,” he said, “and Congress and the laws have to change with it. We have learned that government in not the answer. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.”

He added, “I believe that this is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been part of making it a reality.”

While we were all reading Molly Ivins — her books, her columns, her quips — what was Molly reading?

That question isn’t entirely answered by the exhibit that opened a few days ago at Texas State University in San Marcos, but it’s clear she was reading, and reading a lot. “Molly Ivins’ Library,” on view at the campus’ Alkek Library, displays just a smattering of the 3,500 books from Molly’s personal library recently gifted by brother Andrew Ivins, but the collection shows a voracious reader’s catholic breadth, from the touching (a small leather-bound Bible) to the delightful (a book of pastry recipes from the Hill Country’s Rather Sweet Bakery & Cafe) to the distasteful (Ann Coulter’s Treason).

Seems Molly had a fondness for biography (LBJ, Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov and Albert Camus all get shelf space) and a soft spot for fiction (novels by P.D. James and Stephen Harrigan, among others).

As befits an author of renown in her own right, Molly’s collection also held inscribed gems from colleagues, cohorts, and well-wishers.

“Wish I could write like you!” former Speaker of the House Jim Wright wrote on his own book’s title page.

“Dear Twin,” Maya Angelou’s inscription began.

“To Molly…who done knows how much I love her,” gushed John Henry Faulk.

Heavyweights like Jim Crumley and Bud Shrake weigh in with signed editions as well, but the capper has to be Nancy Reagan’s mysteriously giddy inscription on her own memoir: “Mooch all you can, baby…”

But as glamorous as the high-end literary back-patting must have been, the fact remains that Molly’s collection was no mere vanity, but a genuine working library.

How can you tell? The presence of The Idiot’s Guide to Positive Dog Training is a dead giveaway.

I was looking for something else in the Observer archive and I stumbled on a Molly Ivin’s column called Use It or Lose It from February 2006. Molly wrote that she wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton for president. She found her too inauthentic for the historical moment.

“It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership,” Molly wrote. “There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.”

It makes an interesting counterpoint to today’s Wall Street Journal cover story of Hillary. “Sen. Clinton actually is running two campaigns at once — courting left-leaning Democrats to get the nomination, but mindful even now of maintaining a sufficiently centrist course to withstand Republican attacks and win election next November.”

The atmosphere was just right for a visit by The Texas Observer to Dallas this week.

The streets were dotted with signs about the Trinity River Project. Commercials were on air saying things like “Vote Yes on Proposition One. Keep their toll road out of our park!” I swear some of the signs said, “Vote No! Pave the Trinity!” (but that doesn’t quite sound right), and at least one local weekly, the Dallas Observer (no relation), was recommending that voters “Vote Yes”, loudly, on its cover. Politics and policy were in the air.

As staffers, board members, writers, and fans of the Observer and Jimmie Dale Gilmore came together at the Lakewood Theater just northeast of Downtown, there was plenty of reminiscing about Dallas of the past and discussion of Dallas of the present and future. Gilmore kicked it off with a great version of his classic song “Dallas.” Gilmore described the song as a love-hate serenade to the city that over time has become more love than hate.

Wade Goodwyn, whose sonorous voice many will recognize from his day job as a reporter with NPR read a piece by his father, Larry Goodwyn, a former Observer editor and noted scholar of the populist movement. The piece from 1958, titled “Dallas: the personal and impersonal,” detailed the civic boosterism of a racially segregated town in love with efficiency and the notion of progress, up to a point. Dallas Morning News Columnist Macarena Hernandez read from Dagoberto Gilb’s masterful introduction to Hecho en Tejas, reminding the audience of the demographic shift underway. Former state Rep. Jesse Oliver had the crowd laughing with a deadpan reading of “The great Dallas weed trial,” by Bob Cochran and Molly Ivins. The story detailed the struggle of one Dallasite who wanted to grow his backyard so it resembled a prairie of old and the overzealous city inspector who couldn’t tolerate it. Executive Editor Jake Bernstein read Allen Pusey’s recent story on the knavish local Congressman Pete Sessions and Lou Dubose finished the readings off with Molly Ivins’ lament for the death of the Dallas Times Herald. Attendees were also treated to a showing of Paul Stekler’s “The Texas Observer at 50.” And in the end, Gilmore closed the show with a raucous rendition of “The Deep Ellum Blues.”

While driving around Dallas after the show, I couldn’t stop repeating an Ivins quote Dubose had recalled — one that I have heard before, but never really appreciated until now: Dallas is the kind of town “that would have rooted for Goliath to beat David.”

You see, Dallas has this reputation as a mean place — a place where Republicans rule. As the 2006 election showed, that’s not the case anymore. A Democratic precinct chair who is also one of Dallas’ many lawyers and a friend of mine advised me recently that more lawyers are voting in Democratic primaries in Dallas now, because the once all-GOP Dallas judiciary (district court judges and the like) has turned Democratic. This, according to Martin Frost, is part of a recent Democratic sweep in Big D:

In 2004, Bush-Cheney only won Dallas County 51 percent to 49 percent. Democrats that year won the sheriff’s office and several countywide judgeships. This year (2006), the Democratic Party swept all 42 contested judicial positions (elected county-wide) and all five contested county offices including county judge (the presiding officer of the county commissioner’s court), district attorney, county clerk and county treasurer.

Molly’s comment may still hold water in a lot of ways, but politically, this place is changing, and that’s big news for Texas and the state’s teetering, all-GOP political structure.

Harvey Wasserman, a longtime friend of Molly’s, asked us to post this message. We are happy to do so. All readers are welcome to use the comment section of this blog to send in messages.

We Love You Molly

Our beloved sister Molly Ivins is fighting for her life against cancer, and all we can do is try to send her even a fraction of the brillliance, joy and love she has given us for so many incomparable years.
This genuis daughter of Texas turmoil has stood alone for so long as a voice of clarity, wit, common sense and plain-spoken conscience that it’s hard to know even where to start.
Perhaps most important to remember is that she has not been just a writer. From her modest but gracious home in the heart of Austin, she has done anything but sit back and snipe with that unique penetrating wit of hers. She could have done it. She could have just gone to that keyboard every day, blown them all away, and built her national reputation from the sheer genius of an insulated ivory tower.
But Molly has always been a firm believer in hands-on non-violent combat, which in hands like hers is the ultimate weapon. She puts her heart and soul where her convictions are. She’s fought tooth and nail for The Texas Observer and whatever other worthwhile publications there are that can muster an audience in the Lone Star State. She’s worked with the great Jim Hightower in his climb to elected office. She supports candidates. She goes out of her way. She works hard. She makes her presence felt wherever she thinks it’ll do some good, no matter what the personal cost.
All the while being our very premier writer/humorist. If Mark Twain has a female counterpart on today’s political and journalistic scene, it is Molly Ivins. She has that miraculous ability to slice and dice an entire raft of political horse-dung with a single simple sentence, laced with wry, seeded with sweetness, and so often utterly cleansing and clarifying.
We can all be thankful that our lucky stars have placed her—where else but—in Austin. Throughout the entire horrific nightmare of George W. Bush, whom she has somehow known personally for decades, it has been Molly and only Molly who’s been on the spot to say exactly what needs to be said in exactly the right Texas tone with precisely the right down home balance of horror, outrage and utterly human wit. Nobody else could be doing it as she does, from the inside out, from the high ground lifting up the low. Could we ever INVENT anyone better suited, with a sharper wit and better sense of the jugular?
Except with Molly, it’s the spiritual center that’s the bullseye. With that wry, beautiful smile of hers and that insanely musical Texas twang, she never fails to aim for higher ground. When her eyes roll at the latest unbelievable insanity from this ghastly crew, she still manages to twinkle with that huge, heavenly light that’s only Molly’s.
In her personal life Molly has always been every bit as gracious as you can tell she is from her writing. Last time she carted me around Austin, it was in her obligatory pickup. The thing seemed a bit naked without a gun rack. But Molly behind the wheel was armed aplenty, always willing to drive the few extra blocks, even if you are willing to walk. Her southern grace just won’t think of it, no matter how many better things she has to do. And we know there are plenty.
To hear her speak is to be dazzled by the music of a true national treasure. To see her heart is to be warmed by a truly magnificent woman who embodies all this country can and should be. That she has been on the job for so long, with such persistence and valor, is something for which we can all be joyously thankful.
Molly, we are with you, and we need you, and we love you, as we have needed you and loved you now for so many years now. Get well soon!

In Molly’s honor, some of us are sending contributions to the Molly Ivins Fund for Investigative Reporting at the Texas Observer; 307 West Seventh Street; Austin, TX 78701