Remembering Molly: Live discussion at Wa Post now

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/01/31/DI2007013102241.html

Remembering Molly Ivins
Sharp-Witted Liberal Columnist Dies of Cancer at 62
Paul K. Harral
Vice President/Editorial Director, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Thursday, February 1, 2007; 12:00 PM



Paul Harral, who worked with columnist Molly Ivins during her nine years at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, will be online Thursday, Feb. 1, at noon ET to discuss the Texas icon's life, words and legacy.

Molly Ivins Dies of Cancer at 62, (Post, Jan. 31)

Submit your questions and comments before or during today's discussion.

Harral was editorial page editor at the Star-Telegram from 1990 to 1996, returned in 1999 and still holds the position. Molly Ivins joined the paper in 1992 after a decade at the then-closing Dallas Times Herald, and left in 2001 to join Creators Syndicate full-time.

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Paul K. Harral: And you have to have a thick skin. Well-written columns make people angry and they?ll tell you about it. The longer you write a column, the more difficult it becomes to be fresh and energetic. It?s fun ? but it is also work. Hard work.

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Bethesda, Md.: My favorite all-time Ivins line (and there were so many!) is that Ronald Reagan was so dumb he couldn't pour water out of a boot if he directions were written on the heel. I'm sure gonna miss that woman. I bookmarked her Web site the day I brought home my new PC many years ago, and even though I knew her publication schedule it was the first thing I checked every morning. She really is going to be missed.

Paul K. Harral: People think writing a regular column is easy ? just say what you think. But it is not that easy. I wrote a regular business column three days a week for about a year and a half before I became editorial page editor and I worked all the time ? at home, at parties, at the beach, on the airplane.

The first couple are easy because you write about things you?ve always wanted to write about. But then ? after three or six or 25 ? you have to move into territory you haven?t already formed opinions about. One columnist who writes for me describes it as being like having a big dog in the backyard. If you don?t feed it every day, it eats you.

The best opinion is opinion based on solid reporting ? in that way writing a column is no different than news reporting ? but you have to do the reporting. When you do that, the opinion carries an authority that the reader can sense. Without the reporting, column writing is no better than gossip. You may reach the same conclusion through gossip or reporting, but you get there via a different route.

And you have to have a thick skin. Well-written columns make people angry and they?ll tell you about it. The longer you write a column, the more difficult it becomes to be fresh and energetic. It?s fun ? but it is also work. Hard work.


more at link

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1. another part (This is good)

Southern California: When Patrick Buchanan delivered his "Culture Wars" speech at the Republican National Convention Molly reported, "It sounded better in the original German." Can you provide some more quotable quips from Molly?

Paul K. Harral: From the Star-Telegram editorial this morning:

She called President Bush ?Shrub,? and his father ?Big George.? Texas Gov. Rick Perry showed up as ?Goodhair? and ?Rick the Reluctant.?
Rainstorms were frog-stranglers. Instead of stunned, she was ?whomper-jawed.?
She overspiced her columns with ?sumbitches? that usually, when her more cautious editors got finished, went the way of the periodic ?dammittohell.?
But to Molly, ?dadgummit? sometimes was inadequate to express the necessary depths of outrage ? or the deliciousness of irony.
Some examples:
?If Texas were a sane place, it wouldn?t be nearly as much fun.?
?When it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair?s breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other.?
?It?s hard to embarrass Texas (the price of gasoline has gotten so high, women who want to run over their husbands have to carpool now), but it is kind of embarrassing to have a government that decides to cover a $10 billion deficit by taking services away from the poorest, the weakest, the most frail, oldest and youngest Texans.?
?Whee, here we go, the Lege is back in session! And many a village is missing its idiot.?
?As one who relishes our state?s incontrovertibly bizarre political mores, I must confess I love the sheer awfulness of this (congressional redistricting) map. It is, in its own way, totally awesome and worthy of the truly noble tradition of lunacy for which Texas is so noted.?
?What a summer for national credulity fitness. My credulity gets a lot of exercise, since I cover Texas politics.?
?How they convinced themselves George W. Bush is the Lord?s anointed is beyond me. I?ve known him since high school and watched him closely as a public official for 10 years, and I have yet to see the first sign of it.?
?There was the president at his press conference looking just like a turtle on a fence post.?
?I wouldn?t go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck.?
?Not that I?m accusing anyone of lying, of course, but these people are slicker than bus station chili.?
?If God keeps hanging out with politicians, it?s gonna hurt his reputation.?