Molly Ivins
Had she been born in 1984 instead of 1944, Molly Ivins might have been a blogger. Instead she was an award-winning, best-selling journalist, columnist and author. A Texan, a progressive, a feminist, and a survivor, her passing earlier this year marked the end of an era for Lone Star liberals as well as those across the country who loved her fiery, populist brand. Ivins gave all progressives a prominent national voice.In honoring someone as distinguished as the late, great Molly, sometimes it's best to do so in someone else's words. In this case, hers:
I used to say, having once been a card-carrying Sixties radical, that if I had to be called a liberal, I’d just as soon be the worst kind of liberal -- a bleeding heart. I wound up being a liberal because I was for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam and that’s what I got called. I missed the New Deal and McCarthyism and all that good business.
I’ve got more important things to worry about -- three-year-old kids getting raped and denied admission to a hospital because their mamas don’t have any money and things like that. I carry neither grief nor guilt for the many sins of liberals past and present: there’s too much to bleed over. And laugh over.
Indeed, Molly. For this and more, we name you a Texas Progressive Alliance 2007 Gold Star.
