Molly Ivins died last night in Austin of breast cancer. The liberal columnist who told it like it is with a sense of humor will be missed. In 2004, I wrote here in a post about SXSW:
The keynote for today featured Zack Exley and Eli Pariser of moveon.org. The duo was introduced by Texas political columnist Molly Ivins, who received a huge outburst of applause and general loud approval when she came in. Ivins commented that Move On has “almost single-handedly put people back into
politics.”
The thing I remember now about that day is not the two guys from moveon, but Molly with her bristle-short chemotherapy hairdo and the flood of love that the audience gave her. The SXSW audience is not local, it’s international, and so was the appreciation for Molly and what she stood for. She was a powerful force for change and a great writer.
oh my goodness, Virginia, I didn’t even know she was sick, what a loss! went immediately to the NYTimes obit and its quite extensive and wonderful and made me chuckle quiet a few times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01ivins.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin
e.g. “There are two kinds of humor,” she told People magazine. One was the kind “that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity,” she said. “The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That’s what I do.”
has a great picture of her, too.
makes me feel really sad, sorta weepy and i think i’ll call a friend.
thanks for writing about Molly’s passing – i feel really “behind the curve” news wise, but ….
best
Donna Jones
Hi Donna,
You might be interested in reading some of the thoughts from other women either mentioned or linked to in this BlogHer post.
Virginia