With Molly no longer with us, Texas, rather than having one lone voice pointing out that the Emperor is, in fact, butt nekkid, now has absolutely no perspective. God help us all.

A few of my favorite incisive and discerning quotes from Ms. Ivins…

On the 2000 campaign:

• “It’s like having Ted Baxter of the old ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ show running for president: Gore has Ted’s manner, and Bush has his brain.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 10/25/2000)

On George W. Bush:

• “If you think his daddy had trouble with ‘the vision thing,’ wait’ll you meet this one.” (Progressive, June 1999)

On Bill Clinton:

• “If left to my own devices, I’d spend all my time pointing out that he’s weaker than bus-station chili.” (Introduction to “You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You”)
• “No one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal.” (”You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You”)

On George Bush Sr.:

• “Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.” (Mother Jones, February 1990)
• “The next person who refers to David Duke as a populist ought to be Bushururued, as they now say in Japan, meaning to have someone puke in your lap.” (Mother Jones, May/June 1992)

On Ronald Reagan:

• “You have to ignore a lot of stuff in order to laugh about Reagan — dead babies and such — but years of practice with the Texas Lege is just what a body needs to get in shape for the concept of Edwin Meese as attorney general. Beer also helps.” (Progressive, March 1986)
• (Responding to the Reagan warning that “The Red Tide will lap at our very borders.”) “These sneaky bastards from Nicaragua — there’s 3 million of ‘em down there, there’s only 16 million Texans, and they’ve got us cornered between the Rio Grande and the North Pole.” (Progressive, May 1986)
• “I have been collecting euphemisms used on television to suggest that our only president is so dumb that if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards.” (Progressive, August 1987)

On Texas:

• “I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram column, March 1, 1992)
• “I love Texas, but it is a nasty old rawhide mother in the way it bears down on the people who have the fewest defenses,” Ivins wrote in September 2002.

On the National Rifle Association:

• “You can count on the NRA to put on a show that makes King Lear look like a master of understatement. I suspect they’re all thwarted thespians: If we could just get them into show business we wouldn’t have to listen to them carry on about how freedom is just another word for a .357 Magnum. (Progressive, August 1999)

On Berkeley, Calif.:

• “If there are hookers in this town, they wear Rockports.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 12, 1997)

On Camille Paglia:

• “Christ! Get this woman a Valium!” (Mother Jones, 1991)

On Jerry Brown:

• “Question: What would happen to Brown’s face if he smiled? Second question: What would it take to make him smile?” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 10, 1992)

On H. Ross Perot:

• “It’s hard to envision a seriously short guy who sounds like a Chihuahua as a charismatic threat to democracy, but it is delicious to watch the thrills of horror running through the Establishment at the mere thought.” (Time, June 1992)

On cancer:

• “I’m sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn’t make you a better person,” she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

On Texas voters:

• “Naturally, 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. But it does raise the question: Why bother?”, in a 2002 column about a California political race.

On Bush Jr.:

• “The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy,” from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

On Pat Buchanan:

• “Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan’s speech; it probably sounded better in the original German,” Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful’s speech to the Republican National Convention.

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