So Long Molly Ivins

A few weeks ago author and newspaper columnist Molly Ivins passed away. This is truly a sad loss to the realm of political thought and to the world in general. About politics she famously remarked that "We can't cry so we might as well laugh." and that seems quite apropos here as well. Her razor-sharp wit and keen sense of justice made her a vocal and sometimes vicious commentator on politics and on the foibles of the political elite.

She first began writing and the current president when he came to office as governor of Texas. Her opinion of him did not improve with time, and she frequently criticized his policies as well as his failure to turn a phrase. The president was not her only target, and her columns almost always elicited laugh-out-loud responses from many. Some of her most famous quotes are included here:

• The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.

• What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.

• It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

• It's hard to argue against cynics -- they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.

• Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse.

• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

• I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.

• Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government is on the high road to permanent glory.

I especially like that last one. It is a commonly held belief that people from Texas tend to be larger than life. Molly Ivins was one of those characters who really makes that idea seem true. She will certainly be missed.