Molly Ivins has left us to fend for ourselves. Anyone who writes anything should mourn the loss.
In the first few weeks after 9/11 when almost everyone was a hysterical mess, I remember the relief of reading Molly and thinking: well, at least someone's not lost her mind. I actually emailed the contact link on her column once to urge her to run for president. It was a fanboy gesture, but fueled by a sincere fantasy.
This, more than any of last year's spate of operatic losses, feels like losing a friend, and maybe harder to take still, a protector against the worst.
ETA: As the day wears on, I'm coming to find people without a Texas connection don't necessarily know who she was. Suffice it to say: a columnist, a no-bullshit liberal, an intense intellect almost problematically unable to indulge in self-importance or pretense, a riotous wit, an American in an individualist sense now mostly consigned to history. I realize this sounds over-the-top. What can I say?
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The losses of both Molly Ivins and Ann Richards leave irreplaceable voids. This country sorely needs more, not less, of their kind, particularly in these dark days.
Without a Texas connection myself, it has always amazed me that this state produced Ivins and Richards on the one hand, and then Mrs. Shrub and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on the other. Oh, and Kinky Friedman.
Molly Ivins was the voice of reason in an unreasonable world. Whether amused or outraged by the politics she reported, her love of her fellow man shone through everything she wrote, and the world is poorer without her living voice.
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