In Remembrance: Author and Columnist Molly Ivins - Page 2

I had to chuckle at how The New York Times, famous for playing it safe with language, addressed this topic in the article reporting on her death. The article said she brought to work “her dog, whose name was an expletive.” I find it ironic that the Times apparently had a quandary over how to mention her dog without uttering a profanity. It is ironic because of her own odd relationship with The New York Times. 

The New York Times liked her style and hired her in 1976 as a political reporter. You know how sometimes you can watch a couple and know that it will never work out between them? Such is the case with Ivins and the Times. She’s known for saying things shocking but accurate, like writing in her obituary of Elvis Presley that the scene at Graceland was part national cheerleading camp and part Shriners convention.

The Times is known for being straight-laced. They would edit the color out of her story. She has described her idea of hell as "being edited by the Times copy desk for all eternity." She has suggested that if she said "squawked like a $2 fiddle," the Times copy editors would change it to "an inexpensive instrument." In one story, Ivins described someone as "having a beer gut that belongs in the Smithsonian." That ended up in the paper as "a man with a protuberant abdomen."

The end came when Ivins was sent to cover a community chicken festival in New Mexico and she wrote a reference to it being “a gang pluck.” The newspaper refused to run the phrase and she and the grey lady parted ways. She returned to covering Texas politics. She got a larger audience and a syndicated column, and began writing about national and international issues. Her syndicated column ran in more than 300 newspapers at the time of her death

Let me give some examples of Ivins’ wit:

On vegetarianism: "I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot of land that's good for nothing but grazing."

On politicians: “If God keeps hangin’ around with politicians, it’s gonna hurt his reputation.”

On gun control: "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education.

He is an in-house media critic, a recovering Tetris addict and a proud uncle.

Visit Scott Butki's author page — Scott Butki's Blog