Molly Ivins

First, it's time to say goodbye to another journalist colleague, gone too soon. Today, it was Molly Ivins, dead of breast cancer at 62. She will get many well-deserved eulogies. I can only add my few personal experiences with her. She was in town on the speaking circuit one night in the early '90s when a mutual friend invited us to hang out at Stars for a late-night drinking session. We were both at our best, which is to say our worst, so the jokes were flying back and forth as waiters shuttled bottles of her favorite spirits. Night turned into the next day.

Later on, I had to admit I had finally met a woman who could (easily) drink me under the table.

Listening to Robert Stone the other day, I had to agree with him that alcohol is the scourge for writers. It's too perfect as a drug -- that reliable friend as they struggle with their demons and setting just enough of what's inside out to make people laugh, cry, or identify...

Molly's caustic humor not only was contagious, she could be over-the-top inspirational to progressive audiences. Her story telling was legendary. She gave no ground to those politicians who asserted claim over her Texas. If Bush thought he represented the true Texan, Molly begged to disagree.

Perhaps no journalist was more influential in ripping the false mask off of the "compassionate conservative" to reveal the axis of evil(Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld) within. Thanks to Molly, Junior will always also be known as "Shrub."

Molly was the keynote speaker at the 25th anniversary of the Center for Investigative Reporting, in 2002, just a short time after my mother died. She personally introduced the three of us who co-founded CIR. Her speech was an old-time, shit-kicking, raucously profane political screed.

Later on, when the kids are asleep, I'll try to hook up my inactive VCR and view the tape. Maybe I can add a direct quote.

Until then, I remember one other time.

Molly was promoting another of her books in 1998 and was once again on a lonely book tour. By now, she was extremely well known, as her newspaper column was getting wide circulation and audiences everywhere looked forward to her visits.

But on this particular day, she was sitting in the waiting room of a web-based magazine, waiting for an editor to get out of a meeting and see her. The receptionist was young and didn't know who she was. The staff milling around also was clueless. As I saw her across the lobby, Molly somehow seemed ineffably alone, awkwardly thumbing through a magazine, probably wondering why she was even there that day.

I went over and renewed our acquaintance. She seemed grateful for the connection.

I know I was.

Good-bye, Molly. The next world just became a much funnier, and much more irreverent place. Even as ours became one giant heartbeat less so.

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