MOLLY IVINS, TEXAS ORIGINAL

The ranks of Texas Liberals - a unique species that is in many ways distinct from others similarly-named - thinned out just a little more with the passing of columnist Molly Ivins from complications relating to breast cancer, only four months after cancer claimed Ann Richards, a former Governor of Texas who shared Ivins’ political views.

The Library d’Elisson formerly housed a copy of Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, one of Ivins’s trenchant little screeds that has since gone missing, an unfortunate consequence of my lending it. I may or may not have agreed with Ms. Ivins on a great many things, but she and I shared the opinion that George Bush was, as Governor of Texas, a complete and utter bumblefuck. (I lived there at the time, Esteemed Readers.) History will be the judge of his performance in his subsequent role.

Houston-based blogger Laurence Simon has written an eloquent valedictory for Ms. Ivins, who, like her friend Governor Richards, was a “Tough Texas Broad”:

If you’re going to talk about her, you need a drink in your hand and it had better be your fourth or fifth one that night. Plus, everybody still facing you when you say it needs to blush, not counting those that have turned away in shock and disbelief.

Read the whole thing.

Ave atque vale, Molly. Hope they got barbecue and cold beer in Heaven.