Raise Hell

“It’s almost unnerving to see how prescient [Molly] Ivins was: In the 1970s and ’80s she was already writing about threats to free speech and, even with legal abortion, the ricketiness of women’s reproductive rights. She foresaw the relentless expansion of mass incarceration and the rise of inequality and growing social, economic and racial divisions. (‘Polarizing people is a good way to win an election and a good way to wreck a country,’ she wrote.) The issues unraveling the edges of American democracy, she often said, weren’t left to right, but top to bottom. (To drive home the point, she once called George W. Bush ‘a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.’) Politicians work for the people, not the other way around, an Ivins sentiment that could surely use a revival all its own.”

—Mimi Swartz, columnist, “This Texan Showed That Liberals Can Fight and Have Fun, Too,” The New York Times, on release of new documentary, “Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins,” Sept. 8, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: We need more Molly.

PeezPix

Not THE End, but AN End.

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“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard