The Ephemeral Yet Enduring Quality of John Ford's Clouds, Plus the Space Chimp
The Wonder Years debuted on this date in 1988, thirty-five years ago today. If a similarly nostalgic show debuted today, it would depict the year 2003.
Looking back on the year 1968 now, is the same as looking back on the year 1913 from 1968.
Here's the most unimaginable thing though, somehow the parents in this picture are like 10 years younger than me.
For some reason I can't figure out, I use up a lot of my mental bandwidth everyday thinking about stuff like this!
The house today:
Excellent article on the nature of nostalgia that's related to The Wonder Years.
Huffington Post- 'The Wonder Years' Captured Youth In Suburbia Like Never Before On TV
From the article:
While I identified with the show’s romanticism, the idea of a nuclear family was far out of reach. “The Wonder Years” brought escapism, but it also brought something else that I’d take with me later as a writer: the irresistible pull of turning back, examining what was lost and finding beauty there.
We’re all guilty of this: We look back on old relationships and forget why they fell apart, replaying memories to an inner soundtrack, ignoring the red flags. We look back on different times in our life, to the people we once were and once knew, and we change the story to suit our present-day narrative. We filter reality according to the people we are now, picking out the highlights and lowlights and propping them up like photos on a mantel. As humans, we want things to be better than they are. We want to give meaning to the mundane, or at least find the humor in it.
We want to both forget and remember.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-wonder-years-this-made-me_n_64232e8ae4b0a10577ba1df4
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There is perfection in the world.
Incredible slow motion video of 17 year old pole vaulting superstar Mondo Duplantis clearing prep record 19'1"
https://fb.watch/ioSzIzvO63/?mibextid=NnVzG8
January 31, 2021
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RINO- A Republican In Name Only, i.e., former Republicans who have pledged their allegiance to the former president above their own party and country, even going so far has to ignore his incitement to an insurrection.
January 31, 2021
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Playing racquetball the other night, my opponent said a shot was nice, another one great, the one after that pretty, and a later one beautiful. Where could have it gone from there? Federeresque? Greek godlike? Perfect? If anyone every says a shot I made was "as ephemeral yet enduring as the clouds from a John Ford film," I'm dropping my racquet, going home and never playing again.
January 31, 2020
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Don't gripe about the government! If we are indeed a government of the people, a representative democracy, the government is us. Don't gripe about yourself, change yourself. Don't gripe about the government, change the government.
January 31, 2020
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Note to the president's opponents- the Senate's failure under McConnell to remove a corrupt-on-the-surface-and-to-the-core president is a loss for the country, but use it to your advantage. 75% of the country wanted witnesses, the assumption can be made they know it's a sham without them. Don't go for 51% in November, go for that 75%, and know they are on the side of anti-corruption. Run on making a substantive Constitutional Amendment to limit presidential power, and put into law all the norms this president has broken... all the norms the Senate Republicans implicitly accept.
January 31, 2020
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I got a phenomenal deal on some Breyers ice cream. On the positive side, our price per carton was cut in half. On the negative side, our ice cream cost by the day has now multiplied a hundredfold.
I guess you could use this as an allegory about not really knowing what's good or bad. Or maybe it's just simple story about deliciousness.
January 31, 2019
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You know what the Republicans would do if they were if they were in the Democrats' place with the Supreme Court nominee? They would stall for 2017 and then in 2018 they'd say, "let's give the people a chance to decide in November."
January 31, 2017
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Trump's plan is kind of genius, everybody at the protests doesn't have time to watch the news, and vice versa.
January 31, 2017
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Make no mistake, Trump is trying to own the word "safe." It means supporting his policies. We will never be 100% safe, and he will use that to his advantage- when we are safe, thanks go to him, but when we get attacked, it wI'll be his opponents' fault. Video clips of his calls to still steal Iraqi oil, calls to kill terrorists' families, and the reinstituting of torture make their rounds in the middle east. They are bad policy, war crimes, violations of the Constitution, and make us less safe.
This is a reasonable argument, but many people are beginning to read stuff like this as "anti-Trump = anti-safety = pro-hatred." Dangerous, unsafe. I can't think of a positive historical comparison.
January 31, 2017
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The dog whistles are becoming audible.
"He said that President Trump has been praised for omitting bringing up Jewish people from the Holocaust statement."
Politico- Spicer: Criticism over omitting Jews from Holocaust statement 'pathetic'
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/spicer-trump-holocaust-statement-jews-pathetic-234379
January 31, 2017
Postscript- Oh yeah, remember this very normal controversy?
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Jung- "The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers."
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I don't have a lot of strange dreams, but last night I might have had the strangest of my life. I was watching Norm MacDonald give a TED talk about David Lynch, and he saw Woody Allen in the front row and made a joke about him. At that point the rest of the TED talk turned into a David Lynch film reminiscent of Blue Velvet, with slow-motion shots of audience members laughing hysterically.
January 31, 2016
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Dolly the sheep was named after Dolly Parton… because she was cloned from a mammary cell. When Dolly Parton heard about this she said, “I’m honored. There’s no such thing as baaaaad publicity.” Haha, class act that one.
January 31, 2016
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I have a prediction for tomorrow's Iowa caucuses- Sanders and Cruz win. Trump and Clinton just behind, and Rubio with an impressive showing. Feel free to come back here to ridicule/praise me in 36 hours.
January 31, 2016
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Amish joke: A farmer had some tomatoes that wouldn't turn red, so he asked around for advice. Another farmer told him that he should take off all his clothes in the middle of the night and run around the farm, that would be sure to make them blush. That night the farmer felt bashful and asked his wife if she would run around the farm instead. She obliged, and when she got back in the farmer asked if the tomatoes turned red. She said, "no, but all of the cucumbers stood up."
January 31, 2015
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It's always in the last place you look, as they say. (Of course it is, what sort of lunatic would find something in the second-to-last-place they looked? Why would have they kept looking???)
January 31, 2015
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Hagel said the Iraq War was 'the most fundamentally bad, dangerous decision since Vietnam.' What would Hagel say about Hagel's decision to vote for it?
January 31, 2013
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President Truman ordered the development of thermonuclear weapons on this day in 1950.
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The "Space Chimp" Ham completed a suborbital mission to space on this day in 1961.
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On this night in 1959, Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly play. He had this to say at the 1998 Grammy Awards after winning album of the year for Time Out Of Mind.
“I just wanted to say that one time when I was about 16 or 17 years old I went to see Buddy Holly play at the Duluth National Guard Armory. I was 3 feet away from him and he looked at me. I just have some kind of feeling, I don’t know how or why I know he was with us the whole time we were making this record in some kind of way.”
Buddy Holly was dead in just over 48 hours after that concert, but it certainly left a mark on Dylan.
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On this day in 1968- the Tet Offensive. The Viet Cong guerrillas attacked the United States embassy in Saigon, coordinated with other attacks.
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On this day in 1971, Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.
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Zane Grey joined us on this day in 1872.
"Recipe For Greatness - To bear up under loss; To fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; To be victor over anger; To smile when tears are close; To resist disease and evil men and base instincts; To hate hate and to love love; To go on when it would seen good to die; To look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be. That is what any man can do, and be great."
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Alan Lomax joined us on this day in 1915.
"The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes ... but in the everyday folds who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies."
He made it his life's work to cement hundreds of people's legacies.
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Thomas Merton also joined us on this day in 1915. From New Seeds of Contemplation- "Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for spiritual joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live."
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Jackie Robinson joined us on this day in 1919.
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
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Norman Mailer joined us on this day in 1923. He would have been 100 years old today.
"There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you."
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Philip Glass joined us on this day in 1937. He did the music for Koyaanisqatsi, and then several Errol Morris films- The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and Fog of War. Someone asked him why he uses Philip Glass so much, and more said, "He does existential dread better than anybody."
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Nolan Ryan joined us on this day in 1947. Seven people who were struck out by him had sons who were then struck out by him. Before he was 40 years old, he had 9.4 strikeouts every 9 innings. After he turned 40 he had 10.2 strikeouts every 9 innings. He led the league in strikeouts when he was 40, 41, 42, and 43. Seven no-hitters and zero Cy Young Awards! He tore his UCL in his last game. He threw one more pitch to see if he could continue and it hit 98 mph. At age 63 he threw out a ceremonial first pitch an 85 mph strike.
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A butter salesman named John Lydon was born on this day in 1956, with Dean Martin's Memories Are Made of This at the top of the charts.
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Other notable birthdays- Tallulah Bankhead (1902), Ernie Banks (1931)
If they were a celebrity couple... Tallernie Bankshead.
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Molly Ivins left us on this day 2007, such a wonderful writer.
"Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them."
See the addendum.
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Other notable deathdays - Guy Fawkes (1606), A.A. Milne (1956)
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Noam Chomsky remembers Howard Zinn for the phrase “the countless small actions from unknown people that lead to those great moments that entered the historical record.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute
January 31, 2010
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The Onion- Screwball Jim Nabors Goofs Up Again By Marrying Man
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Stephen Fry, on what he would say if he was confronted by God.
"I’ll say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault’. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”
Funny thing is...if God is omniscient, he knew Stephen Fry's answer before he was even a twinkle in his mother's eye!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/stephen-fry-explains-what-he-would-say-if-he-was-confronted-by-god-10015360.html
Jan 31, 2015 2:07:02pm
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Gretel correctly named about a quarter of these superb owls.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattortile/more-superb-owls#.ka2YpGAmw
January 31, 2015
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New York Magazine- The Money Empathy Gap
I love this quote!
“While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff says, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.”
https://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/
January 31, 2016
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Independent- Iranian women protest hijab as defiant headscarf demonstrations spread
Some people have guts.
Crass- "If you don't like the rules they make, refuse to play their game."
https://youtu.be/YIdcDL64KCE
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/iran-women-hijab-protests-arrests-no-headscarf-take-off-girl-of-enghelab-street-vida-movahed-a8185611.html
January 31, 2018
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Newsweek- Donald Trump Admits He Didn't Read Intelligence Report, Then Criticizes Reporting on It
No, he doesn't tell lies! (Reminds me of his story about the couple that came up and thanked him for returning their son's remains to the United States from the war in Korea... You know that hundred-year-old couple.)
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-intelligence-report-read-threats-1313799
January 31, 2019
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Vanity Fair- LAMAR ALEXANDER: TRUMP OBVIOUSLY DID IT, SO NO NEED TO HEAR FROM WITNESSES BEFORE WE ACQUIT
It seems to be clear- they know he did it, but they are politically incapable of voting against him, or the might find their head on a metaphorical pike. It might be a good time for them to be leaders. Read the guy's full statement in the article, it's nuts. And Merkowski too...
“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.”
She's saying their will be no fair trial, so she'll help ensure it.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/lamar-alexander-impeachment-witnesses
Jan 31, 2020 9:52:43pm
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It's exactly like this, except most of the details perfectly reversed with some of them more the same than ever.
https://youtu.be/XlZd2BYeGqk
January 31, 2020
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The New Yorker- The Tenacity of Rafael Nadal
If Djokovic is defined by machine-like domination, and Federer is defined by pure skill, grace and beauty, Nadal is certainly defined by his...
"...peerless tenacity, his unwavering spirit and fight."
https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/the-tenacity-of-rafael-nadal
January 31, 2022
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Historians believe Jesus was born between 7 and 4 BC. A true miracle, he was born before himself!
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Sacerdotalism- religious belief emphasizing the powers of priests as essential mediators between God and humankind
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Norm MacDonald's joke about his holocaust-denying ventriloquist dummy:
https://youtu.be/EeaH_0NRDZw
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Mark Twain- "Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago--centuries, ages, eons, ago!--for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane--like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!"
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Leo Strauss, The City and Man Later- "No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy, and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint."
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David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion- "It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause."
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Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday- "Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz."
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Bertold Brecht- 'He who does not know the truth is Ignorant, he who knows and not speaks up is Criminal."
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Christopher Hitchens- How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
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James Joyce, Ulysses- "People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus."
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John Waters- "It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.”
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Henry Miller- "If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without."
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H.L. Mencken- "It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.“
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Gandhi- "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Doesn't seem so Gandhi-like!
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Jim Harrison- "I have long since publicly admitted that I seek spirituality through food and wine. In France, Italy, and Spain, I seem more drawn to markets and cafés than to churches and museums. Too many portraits of bleeding Jesus and his lachrymose Momma make me thirsty. The Lord himself said on the cross, “I thirst” and since our world itself has become a ubiquitous and prolonged crucifixion it is altogether logical that we are thirsty."
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Orwell- "The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection."
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Patton Oswalt- “When I was 25, all I did was just scream, ‘Sellout! Fucking sellouts! Corporate sellout! Industry bullshit!’ I looked back on it and I realized, "Oh, I was screaming sellout because nobody wanted to buy what I was selling.”
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Howard Zinn- "You can't be neutral on a moving train."
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Pete Seeger- "The key to the future of the world, is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known."
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FDR- "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
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Jim Gaffigan- "I can't believe we're still giving clothing as a gift. Cause whenever you get clothing as a present, you always open it up and you think, 'Not even close.' And the person that gives it is always like, 'You can take it back if you don't like it.' 'That's alright. I'll just throw it out.' Don't give me an errand."
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Abbey- "Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top."
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Molly Ivins again- "I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag."
Addendum
Myspace Blog
February 1, 2007
Death of a Superstar of Journalism
During a late-night drive last night I was thinking about death, specifically that it's been a long time since I'd been shocked by anyone's death. I got to my hotel, checked the Huffington Post for the daily news and was shocked to see that my favorite columnist, Molly Ivins, died. (Strange coincidence? No, I think about this stuff nonstop.) She was the best. She'll teach you the meaning of the term "acerbic wit" faster than you can read a column, let alone one of her books- Shrub or Bushwhacked.
The current president had this to say about her: "Molly Ivins was a Texas original. I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. She fought her illness with that same passion."
I might be wrong, but I don't think he got it. She thought he was vastly underqualified as he ran for president and after he became a president, she thought he was one of the worst- and she said it a thousand clever ways.
You know what Clinton said of her? She was someone who was "good when she praised me and who was painfully good when she criticized me." That Clinton.
She showed unbelievable diplomacy when mediating the Franken/O'Reilly argument on Book TV. Wow. How'd she do it? She irritated the bosses at the New York Times for not wearing shoes in the office. A coffee mug snuck into her journalist headshot. I mean she had STYLE.
So tonight I was driving home, admiring the beautiful night and thinking about Molly- the full moon, the van gogh clouds, stars a'twinklin'. You know, all the classic night shit. We're worse off without her, but better because of her. But don't take my word for it...
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If you want to read any of her recent columns:
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/
I encourage you to read Matthew Rothchild's In Memorium from the Progressive. (I swear, it's not morbid.)
http://www.progressive.org/node/4490
A few excerpts:
She had just finished telling one of her favorite stories (which we published in August 1993) about the Texas state legislator who introduced a bill banning sodomy, both homosexual and heterosexual, in the Great State, as she always called Texas. When this legislator succeeded in passing the bill with the help of an ally, the two men shook hands in celebration. "Whereupon, the Speaker had to send the sergeant-at-arms over to reprimand them both," Molly said, "because under the new law, 'it's illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in the state.' "
"Friends, soulwise, these are trying times. Now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of our country, and it won't help if you all cower in places like Madison and the Upper West Side, having hot fantods over the approach of fascism. To the barricades, team. And for Lord's sake, don't leave your sense of humor behind."
In January 2006:
"You can stick a fork in Bush, he's done. It's all over except for the next three years, and if that doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, you haven't got a lick of sense."
On herself:
"I don't have an agenda, I don't have a program. I'm not a communist or a socialist. I guess I'm a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible."
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