A Giant Passes January 31, 2007 zuzu Molly Ivins, 62, dead after her third battle with breast cancer. You will be sorely missed in these times. Rest in peace.
Damn, what a loss. She raised hell. She done good. She brought more than her fair share of redemption to the state of Texas. She gave me comfort on overnight visits to my in-laws’, where Faux News is nearly always on the television, because on Sunday mornings, at least, there would be her solitary liberal voice in the newspaper. Thank God for her life. God damn this cancer which cut that life short.
Oh, God, no. 62 is way too young. I got to hear her speak in person once – just stunning, hilarious, witty, charming. Now I’m gonna cry a little at work. Why do things have to change?
This is so sad. We need someone like her. We need a dozen, a hundred more like her. She had been syndicated in the Chicago Tribune, whose op-ed page was (still is) otherwise chockablock with right-wing nitwits like Victor Davis Hanson and Charles Krauthammer. One amusing effect of her columns is that every month, like clockwork, one or two dittoheads would write in huffing and puffing, demanding that she be removed. It seems cancer accomplished what they couldn’t. Life is just so goddamn unfair.
Having met the giant in question, I can tell you she’d have been the first to burst into loud guffaws over your choice of wording in the headline. (For those who haven’t seen her/read vast quantities of her stuff, the woman was TALL. And grew up in a time and place where the diminutive Scarlett O’Hara/Dallas Cowboys cheerleader hybrid was supposed to be the epitome of feminity. She evidently found this funny and decided early on that all that garbage clearly must not apply to her.)
I remember her story of her ill-fated stint with the New York Times. I believe it ended when she described a chicken-dressing (where you take the feathers off the dead chickens) as a “gang-pluck.”