I don't know what to say -- we've just lost one of the really good ones.Dallas Star-Telegram:
Molly Ivins, whose biting columns mixed liberal populism with an irreverent Texas wit, died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at her home in Austin after an up-and-down battle with breast cancer she had waged for seven years. She was 62.
Ms. Ivins, the Star-Telegram’s political columnist for nine years ending in 2001, had written for the New York Times, the Dallas Times-Herald and Time magazine and had long been a sought-after pundit on the television talk-show circuit to provide a Texas slant on issues ranging from President Bush’s pedigree to the culture wars rooted in the 1960s.
"She was magical in her writing," said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ms. Ivins at the newspaper’s Austin bureau in 1992, a few months after the Times-Herald ceased publication. "She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn’t hurt so bad."
I once wrote about her, "I hope Molly Ivins outlives me, because then there's a slim chance that she writes my obituary." I was referring to an obit she wrote for former Texas Governor Ann Richards. Not much chance of that now.
I'll miss her columns and, too tell you the truth, I was halfway convinced that it wasn't possible for her to ever die. It takes one hell of a lot to get you to laugh at an obit and the Star-Telegram manages it with snippets of Ivins columns.
Go check it out.
Tags: news | politics | media | Texas | obits | Molly Ivins
