Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins Read Online Free PDF Page A

goober in gubernatorial”; and, citing corporate arrogance coupled with influential lobbying efforts, said, “They think they’re the top dogs and we’re the fire hydrants.”
    It was this facility for uniting pithy commentary with razor-sharp wit that forged a bond between Molly and Hightower. It’s a fitting tribute to her that when Sarah Palin silliness bubbled to the surface during the 2008 Republican presidential campaign, a frequently heard refrain was, “God, wouldn’t Molly have had a field day covering
this
convention.”
    When Houston swindler Allen Stanford’s billion-dollar scam imploded—following the collapse of Bernard Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme—the lament became, “God, if only Molly were here to write about this.”
    And what about that panoply of philandering goody two-shoes who surfaced after Molly slipped the surly bonds of earth—not to mention the bizarre 2010 Supreme Court decision that essentially established a corporation as a person, thereby freeing each greedy, power-hungry company with deep pockets to buy even more elections than its lobbyists had already purchased? Molly would have gleefully pounced on George Rekers, the homophobic founder of an organization that, among other efforts, seeks to “cure” homosexuality. He was caught on a European vacation with a male companion secured through rentboy.com, a gay website.
    Or with John Ensign, the not-so-honorable senator from Idaho and once-upon-a-time presidential hopeful who was banging his friend’s wife? And Lordy, let’s not forget South Carolina governor and presidential wannabe Mark Sanford, whose peccadilloes with an Argentinean woman not his wife introduced the term “hiking the Appalachian trail” to every late-night comedian’s shtick in 2009? And, no, stupid behavior is not the exclusive purview of the Dems: Eliot Spitzer’s dalliance with a hooker cost him his job too. The Repubs are just better at theological hypocrisy.
    The heart aches for that too-soon-silenced Ivins raillery.
    The more I considered the prospect of writing a book, the more I thought maybe a peek at another side of Molly would provide a momentary distractionfrom how much we still miss her singular political voice—a little lagniappe, as they say in Cajun country, to smooth the rough edges of loss.
    Just maybe, I reckoned, it could be fun to share Molly stories from myriad friends, almost none of them household names but nonetheless an integral part of her substantial Rolodex. She never could remember anyone’s address or telephone number, so well-worn cards detailing digits for friends and acquaintances were interspersed with names and numbers for cabinet members, governors, members of Congress, musicians, cabinetmakers, mechanics, and plumbers.

5
The Molly Too Few Knew
    LOTS OF FAMOUS FOLKS KNEW MOLLY , but not in the way her Austin crew did—the ones who gathered Saturday mornings at Polvo’s, a South Austin Mexican restaurant where the food was decent, the prices were right, and from time to time folks actually got what they ordered more or less at the same time.
    Gal pals were a solid component of the Molly menagerie. They were the ones who participated in potluck lunches, brunches, and dinners. Meals might be built around a recipe theme as arch as a Julia Child all-vegetable brunch or as lame as a repast of all-red foods. Some were camping compadres on trips that invariably included a canoe whose sole purpose was to haul beer.
    At the other end of the spectrum were meticulously planned dinner parties for notables she rarely discussed and certainly never bragged about knowing. Even less well known were the aspiring writers she encouraged; the sons and daughters she counseled without ever tattling to their parents; the myriad friends who drove her to chemo treatments, overfilled her refrigerator with food, and sat with her when failing health