"I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying-it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off." Molly Ivins.

I woke up this morning wanting to write about yesterday's Cameron County Democratic Convention, but the front page of the Brownsville Herald had an article that kicked me back into memories of old anger and resentment.

The article was called A Link in the Chain by Steve Sinclair and it had first been published by the Valley Morning Star. It was about the Intracoastal Waterway, and if any subject ever deserved to have the muck raked, this is one. Since Steve's last name is Sinclair, I imagined him the direct descendant of Upton and anticipated hearing it blasted with both barrels.

Alas, no. There apparently had been no news about the intracoastal waterway; this was only a puff piece promoted by Bill Summers "president and CEO of Rio Grande Valley Partnership, which promotes economic development in the Valley."

It has been years since I had a lawsuit involving the intracoastal waterway. An environmental group hired me to file a lawsuit to get an environmental impact statement. My only source of information is this old lawsuit, so I hope that if something has changed and everything is fixed now, someone one will clear this up.

I doubt it though, Summers is quoted as saying, "The waterway is very, very important to the Valley. Gasoline is shipped to the Valley, raw sugar is shipped out and sand for concrete for concrete is brought in."

This part leads me to think may be things probably have not improved.

Summers then says, "If those things didn't go down the waterway, they would go down the highway. It's a lot cheaper and more beneficial this way."

This part is most likely untrue.

This was the hustle:

The Army Corps of Engineers would dig out a 12 foot deep channel clear down the middle of the bay. The manner of digging it is a machine that sucks the mud out of the ground and sprays it into the water. The cloudy water kills shrimp hatchings and wrecks the shrimp industry. It is also nasty for various tourist activities.

There is a less destructive way to dig a channel involving putting the mud on barges and moving it out, but this was not done, because it was too expensive.

The mud would soon slide back into the channel, so the mud spraying into the bay had to be almost constant to keep the channel clear.

About the only company that used the intracoastal waterway was a group called Hollywood Marine. It was owned to a large extent by a prominent Republican operative in Houston. Hollywood Marine was the subject of a 1981 Supreme Court denial of cert in which Justice Rehnquist dissented. He described the underlying incident as follows:

On August 5, 1976, a barge owned by petitioner discharged over 2,000 gallons of oil into the Intracoastal Waterway in Texas. The spill occurred as a result of damage sustained by the barge while it was under the control of a tugboat operator. The spill was cleaned up by the Coast Guard at a total cost to the United States of $61,816.85.

Hollywood Marine sold in 1999 to Kirby Corp. for $325 million.

Hollywood Marine would haul gasoline to the Valley by barge, thereby avoiding the cost of using the pipeline all the other gas companies had to use.

It would then, about the time the burning fields of old sugar cane were causing children to have asthma all over the Valley (ask your child's allergist about this one), ship loads of cane back on the barges.

Why didn't Hollymarine simply ship in the Gulf instead of the intracoastal waterway? Gulf transport requires double-hulled vessels to prevent spills. Transport in the intracoastal waterway permitted single-hulled vessels that were obsolete and viewed as dangerous in other locations.

This whole dangerous, environmentally harmful, boondoggle was supported by the Port of Harlingen which at time had approximately 1 1/2 employees and served only Hollywood Marine.

Apparently from Mr. Sinclair's article and the website, the Port of Harlingen has more customers now, but at that time, both the Port and the intracoastal waterway was an indirect subsidy for a politically stout company to keep it from using double hulled vessels.

Mr. Sinclair, I'll bet if you dig around a bit, there is a lot more story still there. Do your namesake proud: dig in.

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.

Undervaluing Hillary?

I looked forward to going down with Dennis Kucinich's ship. I never guessed the Texas primary would matter and I thought Kucinich would at least be on the ballot. After the choice became Clinton, Obama, Edwards, I moved on to Obama. The Clinton's were too far to the right for me and I did not trust Edwards' born-again class warrior image. Also, just like many voters take a mindless position in favor of the tallest candidate, I have a mindless preference for a candidate who can give a speech.

I liked Huckabee better than Romney, Jesse Jackson better than Dukakis, Everett Dirkson better than Barry Goldwater.

I never heard Edwards give a good speech. Maybe television doesn't do him justice, but all I heard was monotone and platitudes. It is hard for me to see him as a trial lawyer, but I know some good coaches who can help him.

Clinton's speeches grated on my ears (more on this perception later), but I expected less of her because she was a big-firm lawyer and they are not supposed to be able to talk.

Obama, by contrast, can talk. He is a hot Billy Sunday preacher, a cool Walter Cronkite commentator, a Salvation Army heart to heart peddler of charity, a Laurence Tribe constitutional professor. Pick the crowd and he has the words.

Does this mean he can talk his way out of the half a billion dollar sludge machine that will slam him this Fall? I don't know, but if he gets the nomination, at least I won't have to listen to rank amateurs shouting at the television monitor ad nauseum.

Now let's get to the beef. Kathy says none of this matters. I might as well be asking how tall candidates are and I always undervalue the women candidates.

In fact, she says, everyone undervalues women in leadership, men and women alike.

There is support for this position. An op-ed columnist, Nicholas Kristof, made this argument in the New York Times last month:

In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man....

Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

I don't have any reason to believe I'm immune to the Goldberg Paradigm. On the contrary, I'm old enough to remember when women in power were unusual and I saw that world as normal. We said about the girl debaters, they were like dogs who could walk on their hind legs; we were impressed, not because they could do it well, but because they could do it at all.

There was not a single woman senator when I graduated from High School in 1969. Nor was there a single woman governor. The only women who had ever been governor replaced their husbands and they were the ilk of Ma Ferguson and Lurleen Wallace.

We had Sarah T. Hughes, but she was a novelty.

By the time I got to law school women were a pretty large minority, but when I started practicing law, there were still almost no lawyers in the courtroom. Docket call was held back in the judge's chambers where the lawyers smoked and told blue jokes (and racist jokes, for that matter, but that is another story).

So can I open the mind to the possibility that I should value and like Hillary more than I do? That she will be a better president than I can perceive because I am suffering from this syndrome? That I should have liked Ann Richards better than I did? And Molly Ivins? And for that matter Sappho, the Brontes, Dickenson and Angelou?