Now playing: “Some Loud Thunder” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Molly Ivins, the progressive Texan commentator and writer, has passed away. Every liberal blogger in America is writing about it, but Feministing is taking the right route, focusing on such a wonderful, funny woman she was. Quoting the Dallas Morning News, they write:
The 62-year-old writer was a rare commodity in Texas – a liberal – who wrote a twice-weekly column that appeared in at least 300 newspapers. Based in Austin, her commentary appeared in national magazines from Harper’s to Playboy, and her Texas drawl was heard parsing events on shows ranging from 60 Minutes to The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.
She did not confine her humorous skewering to Republicans. She aimed it at wherever she perceived pomposity or wrongdoing.
Of the Gore-Bush presidential race in 2000 she said, “It’s like having Ted Baxter of the old ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ show running for president: Gore has Ted’s manner and Bush has his brain.”
Of ultraconservative U.S. Rep. Jim Collins, R-Dallas, in the early 1980s, she said: “If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”
Also, they link to this wonderful video, where Molly Ivins investigates Texas’s anti-sodomy laws, which state that it is illegal to own six or more dildos because then you have the intent to distribute, but five or less and you’re a hobbyist. Stores can’t sell dildos, but they can sell educational devices. If something is shaped like a penis, it can’t vibrate, and if something vibrates, it can’t be shaped like a penis. Check it out:
