Farewell, Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins died Wednesday. She is gone too soon.

Ivins was one of the sharpest political observers in the country and she was funny as hell. She wasn't funny just to make herself popular. Her goal was to expose the stupidity, greed and ignorance she saw in politics both in her native Texas and nationally.

Did she ever.

It was Ivins who nicknamed George W. Bush "Shrub." It was Ivins who once told her readers, as the Texas legislature was convening, that “every village is about to lose its idiot.” And it was Ivins who wrote, of a Texas congressman, “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”

In her last column, published as she was gravely ill with cancer, she urged readers to "raise hell" against the Iraq war. "We are the people who run this country," she wrote. "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."

When someone I greatly admire dies, I'm reminded of the story of a friend of George Gershwin who, when told of the composer's untimely death, is supposed to have responded: "I don't have to believe that if I don't want to."

I don't have to believe it about Molly Ivins, either.

Molly Ivins links:

• The New York Times obit.
• Her syndicate has the last year's columns online here, plus a tribute.
• NPR's Fresh Air did a retrospective of interviews with Ivins on Thursday.
• The Texas Observer has a tribute here.
• Ken Bunting of the Seattle P-I recalls Ivins.