Learning to Love Molly

When Molly Ivins died, the expressions of grief filled a couple of our regular magazines, Texas Monthly and Nation. I don't remember anything showing up in the Economist, International Socialist Review or People. Anyway, I had some mixed feelings about the reviews.

Then, recently, Truth Seeker referred me to an article about Hillary by Molly. He suggested that if I read the piece I would forgive myself and learn to love Molly. It was a good suggestion. I liked the article, I felt better and I agreed with Molly. Why, then, do I not already love her?

This takes me back about thirty eight years. (And Truth Teller thinks he's old). The only time I met Molly Ivins was at a local chapter meeting of an ACLU meeting in Austin. I believe it was the Spring of 1970. Molly was some new honcho at the Texas Observer. She was already a local celebrity and I had been told that when I met her.

Also, I was nineteen and she was barely older, or at least looked that way through those nineteen year old eyes. I knew there was a huge social gap already, she a college graduate with a job at the Texas Observer and I was star struck. On stardom level, she could have been Willie Morris as far I was concerned.

Anyway I got to meet her. She shoved a damp, limp piece of flesh towards my chest. The rules I knew were that you could offer to shake the hand of a man, but you could not offer it to a woman, but if she offered it to you, you could shake it. Boy was I excited. I grabbed her hand and pumped it like Willie Loman. She grimaced, complained about my grip and moved away. The whites of my eyes turned yellow and I have viewed her ever since through jaundiced eyes.

...aside the Devil turnd For envie, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plaind....

The years passed and this early first impression hardened into certainty and fact: she was a phony and a snob.

She had gone to an expensive private prep school. She grew up in a big city filled with sophisticated people. I went to a public high school in a small city filled with hicks. So who was she to pretend she had a clue what this creature, a "Texan" was, indeed make a career based on explaining it to New Yorkers.

I did think she knew something about Bush, but not in the way she later sold it:

As it happens, I have known George W. Bush for a long time -- not well, but for a long time. Since we were both in high school. He went to prep school in the East, and I went to prep school in Houston, but he hung around with friends of mine, dated girls I knew. I would never claim we were friends, but he was someone I vaguely knew.

Molly, if you were at a level to hang around with Bush, you don't have a clue about what you're talking about. And is this a sly way, wink, wink, of saying, "I'm really a upper class kind of person. When I talk about being from Texas and 'bidness,' I'm just slumming?"

I never bought her accent. How could such a sophisticated private school snob girl pretend to talk like that. And all of this dropping of the "g"'s:

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

Please. Fraidy-cats? Please, again.

Contrived country was what it was to me and this was phoniness just like pretending you had an English or French accent. I thought I saw it in other places as well: Jim Hightower. Even (please, Lord, don't strike me dead) Dean Page Keeton, and it always sounded phony to me and I didn't like it.

I knew what a rural Texas accent sounded like--it was my father in law, Joe. But unless you grew up on a ranch, had 6th grade education and had broken most of the bones in your body on steel erections, cows, drunks' skulls, bad horses, falling from bad whiskey, oil rigs and high curbs in Ojinaga, you did not have a right to try to talk like that, and she didn't have a right to talk like that and she never got it right. I didn't like it one damn bit.

Then she began to rise on this Bush thing, Shrub.

I saw this as pure hustle. "Let's tell the New Yorkers that they can't understand Bush because he's a Texan. But since I'm a Texan, I can explain him to you. Texans are x, y, z and Bush is x, y, z and that is why he acts like that. So if you need to understand something about him you can read my books and articles."

Her premises offended. That Bush acted like a Texan and that Molly accurately described Texans. Some examples:

The president is a Texan, the governor is an Aggie, God's in His heaven, all's right with the world. And I want it noted for the record that I am doing my dead-level best to be cheerful about this revolting development.

High entertainment value: The fact that Bush cannot express himself well in the English language is a constant source of delight to us all. In his defense, no matter how badly he mangles it, you can almost always tell what he was trying to say. The Texanism is, "My tongue got caught in my eyeteeth, so I couldn't see what I saw saying."

His favorite foods are chili dogs and chicken-fried steak, which will gross out the entire East Coast. Take that, you radicchio-eating foodies.

His new ranch in Crawford will force the entire national press corps to spend tons of time in Waco, upping their cultural IQ by going to the Dr Pepper Museum.

The famous Texas two-step is getting a heavy workout in Washington. You glance away for just a moment to watch the World Series and -- oops -- we're no longer for regime change in Iraq.

First, why concede Bush is a Texan? He was born in Connecticut. Connecticut is not part of Texas. It is not like Texas. His grandfather Prescott Bush was United States Senator from Connecticut and on the corporate boards that profiteered to allow Hitler's rise to power. Bush is multi-generational Eastern malefactor of great wealth. Then Bush grew up in Midland. Midland is the management town. It is New England with hot summers. They play polo there. Odessa is Texas, the labor town. Bush grew up in Midland, not Odessa. Then Bush went to Houston (River Oaks?) were he hung around with Molly and her friends, because those private school kids stick together. I'll bet he didn't grow up in the Fifth Ward.

I don't see Bush as a "typical Texan" at all. I see him as a spoiled rich frat boy, part of the power elite who own most of the wealth of the country and won't share, who always thought he was entitled, never loved anyone but himself, and was socially promoted through big name expensive schools and elitist secret societies. I thought Jesse Jackson pegged him better than Molly: He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.

Next, why concede Texas is what Molly says it is. It is not rich and rural. It is not like Dallas on TV. It is urban and poor and many parts are mostly black or brown. And I've never heard anyone say "my tongue got caught in my eyeteeth," and I've gotten my hair cut a thousand times in Texas barbershops. Even the rural ones where people speak English, nobody ever said this.

So I read her articles when they happened to pop in front of my eyes, but I never bought or read one of her books. Then she died, damn her.

I am sorry she died so young. But I haven't learned to love her.

But it is Easter time. OK, Molly, I forgive you.