News
2007-02-01
Molly Ivins dies
of breast cancer at 62
Molly Ivins dies
at 62
Best-selling
author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal
Best-selling
author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal
who skewered the political establishment and pointed out the
ridiculousness of President Bush's push to ban same-sex
marriage, died Wednesday after a long battle with
breast cancer. She was 62.
David Pasztor,
managing editor of the Texas Observer, confirmed
her death. The writer, who made a living poking fun at Texas
politicians, whether they were in her home base of
Austin or the White House, revealed in early 2006 that
she was being treated for breast cancer for the third
time.
More than 400
U.S. newspapers subscribed to her nationally syndicated
column, which combined strong liberal views and
populist-toned humor. Ivins's illness did not seem to
hurt her ability to deliver biting one-liners. ''I'm
sorry to say [cancer] can kill you but it doesn't make
you a better person,'' she said in an interview with the San
Antonio Express-News in September, the same
month cancer claimed her friend former Texas
governor Ann Richards.
To Ivins,
''liberal'' was not an insult term. ''Even I felt sorry for
Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about
being born liberal—fish gotta swim and hearts
gotta bleed,'' she wrote in a column included in her
1998 collection, ''You Got to Dance With Them What Brung
You.''
In a column in
mid January, Ivins urged readers to stand up against
Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. ''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,''
Ivins wrote in the January 11 column. ''We need people in
the streets, banging pots and pans, and demanding,
'Stop it, now!'''
Ivins's
best-selling books included those she coauthored with Lou
Dubose about Bush. One was titled Shrub: The Short
but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush,
and another was BUSHWHACKED: Life in George W.
Bush's America.
Ivins's jolting
satire was directed at people in positions of power. She
maintained that aiming it at the powerless would be cruel.
''The trouble with blaming powerless people is that
although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the
powerful, it does miss the point,'' she wrote in a 1997
column. ''Poor people do not shut down factories.... Poor
people didn't decide to use 'contract employees'
because they cost less and don't get any benefits.''
(AP)
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