brainrow

I was talking with a friend earlier today. He’s a tennis buff, and he said many players put a lot of energy into learning just what brand of racquet, or shoes, or sweatband is used by an Andy Roddick or a Venus Williams or some other favorite professional player. Then they spend a lot of money to buy those products, expecting a big improvement in their own game.

That gave me an idea. I thought perhaps I could buy an old Ansel Adams camera and become a great photographer. Or maybe get ahold of Molly Ivins’ typewriter, and be a great writer.

Sad news:

Molly Ivins, the liberal newspaper columnist who delighted in skewering politicians and interpreting, and mocking, her Texas culture, died yesterday in Austin. She was 62. …

In her syndicated column, which appeared in about 350 newspapers, Ms. Ivins cultivated the voice of a folksy populist who derided those who she thought acted too big for their britches. She was rowdy and profane, but she could filet her opponents with droll precision.

After Patrick J. Buchanan, as a conservative candidate for president, declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention that the United States was engaged in a cultural war, she said his speech “probably sounded better in the original German.” …

Her Texas upbringing made her something of an expert on the Bush family. She viewed the first President George Bush benignly. (“Real Texans do not use the word ‘summer’ as a verb,” she wrote.)

But she derided the current President Bush, whom she first knew in high school. She called him Shrub and Dubya. With the Texas journalist Lou Dubose, she wrote two best-selling books about Mr. Bush: “Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush” (2000) and “Bushwhacked” (2003).

The Washington Post says she “poked fun at the powerful,” but she did more than that. I read “Shrub” and “Bushwhacked,” and under the surface humor is a trove of information and insight that should have been a warning to all of us. She was a stunningly good writer — she could express a thought with such sharpness and clarity that a reader might never think about a topic in the same way after reading Molly’s take on it.

I sure hope that talent and that spirit came from the typewriter she used. If not, we’ve suffered a grievous loss.

Ms. Ivins learned she had breast cancer in 1999 and was typically unvarnished in describing her treatments. “First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you,” she wrote. “I have been on blind dates better than that.”
But she kept writing her columns and kept writing and raising money for The Texas Observer.

Indeed, rarely has a reporter so embodied the ethos of her publication. On the paper’s 50th anniversary in 2004, she wrote: “This is where you can tell the truth without the bark on it, laugh at anyone who is ridiculous, and go after the bad guys with all the energy you have.”

In her final column, she offered some advice to all of us:

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. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

The talent, I fear, she took with her. But reading her columns, I think she left the spirit here with us.