He writes, in part:The warmest-hearted populist ever to pick up a pen with the purpose of calling the rabble to the battlements, Ivins understood that change came only when some citizen in some off-the-map town passed a petition, called a Congressman or cast an angry vote to throw the bums out. The nation's mostly widely syndicated progressive columnist, who died January 31 at age 62 after a long battle with what she referred to as a "scorching case of cancer," adored the activists she celebrated from the time in the late 1960s when she created her own "Movements for Social Change" beat at the old Minneapolis Tribune and started making heroes of "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers."
Follow the link in the title box of this post and read the rest. The Nation has announced it will be publishing more of them over the next daus and weeks.
1 comment:
Reading this post on Fri, Feb 2.
This is an email I sent midday to "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" about their tribute to Molly.
re: broadcast of Thursday, Feb 1, 2006
I did not know that female emasculation was a working phrase until I saw your tribute to Molly Ivins. This is not a criticism of her piece from the 1980's you chose to share (a send up of Texas public "art"). No, it's a criticism of your conscious decision to disregard her barbed wit as it was directed towards political and governmental leadership - glossing it with passing reference.
Elevating her more obscure nonpolitical local humor at the expense of why she was syndicated in the neighborhood of 400 newspapers left me in a state of amazement.
Molly, however, has left with her "set" intact. You on the other hand have a new investigative story to pursue to find where yours has gone.
Happy Hunting
Richard Tracy
Oklahoma City, OK
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