If I say Molly Ivins is a populist, what does that mean? In the simplest terms, I suppose, it means that she allies herself, philosophically and politically, with "the people" and is suspicious of the powerful, of "elites."
Take the column she once wrote about the feminist-baiting enfant terrible of early '90s academe, Camille Paglia. (Remember her? Queen of inflammatory sound bites like "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts"?) Ivins did the piece on Paglia only reluctantly, apparently. She writes that when her editor suggested it, she told him, "I'm not good on New York intellectual controversies. … I'm a no-hoper on this stuff, practically a professional provincial." Anyone who's read any of Ivins' books, essays or widely syndicated columns knows better than to take this confession of provincial anti-intellectualism at face value. Ivins is not only well-read, she's damn smart. The noteworthy thing is the impatience with self-important eggheads. What could be more populist than that?
Ivins is not merely a populist, though. She is a progressive populist. The elites that concern her most are the ones with endless dough — and the power that goes with it. She doesn't cotton to politicians who carry the water for Big Oil, High Finance and the Military-Industrial Complex. Give her enough rope (which they always do), and she'll string those bastards up, albeit reluctantly.
She'd probably resent that characterization, and with good reason. She may be a committed and cutting political commentator, but she's not a killer. Not even in a metaphorical sense. In fact, some of her sharpest invective is aimed at the mean-spirited, dishonest and poisonous political rhetoric of bully boys like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. That might seem like a contradiction, but it's not. For one thing, her own invective is generally (although not exclusively) less than savage. One of her favorite words is "nincompoop" — not exactly lethal stuff.
For another thing, she's unrelentingly good-humored, and even her harshest criticism has a teasing quality to it. She's the person who coined the term "Shrub" (as in little Bush) for George W. It's impossible to imagine her in a hatemonger mode — livid, threatening, face turning red, neck veins popping, hand held high and ready to smite the life from some ideological foe. She's pointed, sure, but within limits. Her limits aren't the debate-deflecting, artificially genteel limits of the comfortably smug, but they are limits that keep basic decency at least within arms' reach.
In fact, I was struck by how many of Ivins' answers in our interview began with a certain amount of fitfulness — not waffling, mind you, but a reticence that the transcription below may not adequately convey. Her experience of George W. dates back years — as does her dogging of him — so I wanted to get her reaction to the national statistics on poverty that came out last week. Was she surprised? Far from leaping at the opportunity to bash Bush, Ivins seemed at least somewhat protective of her fellow Texan. Her immediate response was "It doesn't surprise me," but she immediately added "Although the real question is how much of it should be blamed on Bush." And she only assigned that responsibility to him in a roundabout way. My notes at that point are filled with broken sentences, ellipses. Hesitancy. Molly Ivins is not some unrelenting spitfire, although I have no doubt that she could, and would, spit in your eye if the occasion warranted it.
She is gracious. Our interview was a "squeeze-in" and I barreled through it with the single-mindedness of a man determined to make my word-count, come hell, high water or the imminent arrival of Molly Ivins' ride. If my urgency bothered her, she never let on, remaining sympathetic and unruffled throughout, a sense reinforced by the soothing sounds of k.d. lang playing faintly in the background (I>country k.d. lang, as she termed it). After I hung up, I felt the absence of Ivins and her slightly cadenced Texas accent — the warmth of it.
The woman, you see, doesn't just extol the virtues of "The People"; she's a populist who genuinely likes people. Her passion for social justice is palpable, but it's never crudely divisive. Never simply "us vs. them." "The Salt of the Earth vs. Rich Mr. Evil." It's this kindness and good-humored connectedness that give her an unmistakable tone. Her newest book, Who Let the Dogs In?, is subtitled "Incredible Political Animals I Have Known." She is, in her own inimitable way, just such a creature. Get to know her.
DB: You're going to be down in Sarasota on Sept. 11. Is the appearance tied in with 9/11 somehow? Is it something you plan to address?
Molly Ivins: No, I was quite startled. The Sarasota Herald pointed it out. But I'm making an appearance for the ACLU, so it's a natural fit and I'll be talking about John Ashcroft, among other favorites.
DB: Sarasota is, of course, Katherine Harris' home turf [Florida Secretary of State during the 2000 presidential election and now U.S. Congresswoman from Florida's 13th District]. What's your take on Katherine Harris?
Ivins: Not just Katherine Harris, my father, Jim Ivins, was from Sarasota. It's not so much Katherine Harris that bothers me, but it seems like the state government has all but announced again that they are going to cheat. They tried again with the felon list. Jeb had a list of 47,000, but the Miami Herald reported that over 2,000 people on that list had already had their right to vote restored through a clemency process. And so that list was withdrawn.
DB: We've all been conditioned to refrain from using the word "conspiracy" or run the risk of sounding like fringe lunatics. But what IS going on in Florida? What would you call it?
Ivins: I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but I do believe that there is such a thing as outrageous chutzpah. The idea that they would try this again, after disgracing themselves in 2000. It's as if they wouldn't leave any doubt that they are willing to cheat. At minimum, I think you need a paper trail with the electronic voting machines. When voting rights groups asked for an audit of the 2002 gubernatorial election, the records were supposedly gone. Oops. Fitting the machines to provide a paper trail on each ballot is not only not impossible, it's not even difficult.
DB: In the introduction to Who Let the Dogs In? you talk about how you asked yourself if there were any Underlying Meanings or Themes to the book. As I was reading it — perhaps because I was keeping that in mind — I did notice some points of emphasis that kept coming up. The corruption of politics by big money is an obvious one. …
Ivins: Exactly.
DB: … Fun is another. It's important to you, in part, you say, because you are a progressive journalist in a state that is solidly right wing—
Ivins: That's right. If we didn't laugh, we'd go insane.
DB: … Another thing I noticed was the amount of attention you pay to language — and this is what I wanted to get your response on. It ranges from mild amusement with the Bushes' dyslexia to more serious concerns: like the way in which language can be used dishonestly in politics. Where do you draw the line? Is it merely a matter of degree — of how vituperative someone is — or is it more a matter, as you seem to suggest in the Limbaugh chapter, that it's also a matter of the target of the language. That it's one thing to speak bile to power, it's another thing to speak it to the powerless?
Ivins: Exactly. Satire, that comes with different twists. There's also some information in the book about the list of words Newt Gingrich uses. The GOP issued a list of the words that Republican candidates were supposed to use to describe Democratic opponents: "sick," "pathetic," "traitor," "bizarre." I found that really disturbing, that any party as a matter of course would resort to words like that. Immediately you've taken politics down to a depth. If those are the words that Newt advises every Republican candidate to use to describe his opponent, then what do you use to run against someone who is really despicable? What do you use? It's a cheapening of the language.
It's ugly. And unnecessary. I don't think most people that run for office are sick, twisted, perverted traitors. You may disagree with them on Medicare, but does that mean that you have to resort to this kind of language? It really disturbs me.
DB: One place this struck me particularly was in your comment that you were uncomfortable with the term "Culture War" because it applied the word "war" to politics — something you see as extremely dangerous. It seemed like your discomfort with the term went beyond semantics, though. Where do you stand on the whole culture war thing?
Ivins: I'm a populist, I believe a lot of this is pure distraction — let's get a lot of hot button issues that get people distracted. Gay issues. Gay marriage. Race issues. None of this has anything to do with how government runs your life. The fact that about 6 million people lost the right to get time-and-a-half for overtime instead of straight comp time means much more to people's lives than all this bizarre stuff about who's the best Christian. It's not that I think Christianity is unimportant, it's not, but I think it's silly to focus on it in this way at the expense of these other issues.
DB: I'm not sure if I understand you. Are you saying that progressives shouldn't get drawn into this conflict? It seems like conservatives are working this to their advantage, which is the point of, for example, Thomas Franks' new book, in which he talks about the ways conservatives have been able to leverage certain social preoccupations to get Kansans to vote against their own economic self-interest. What's your thinking on this?
Ivins: Back up. My thesis, as a populist, is that these kinds of social issues take away from the issues that populist movements have always addressed. So I see this conflict in precisely those terms. You have to clear away all this smoke to get at the real issues that actually affect people's lives. Tom Franks is also a populist — it's certainly not surprising that we both come from the same point of view on this. There's also an extent, historically, in which populist movements have been destroyed by this stuff. The 19th-century populist movement was destroyed by racism. When I say I have my doubts about the Culture War, I'm talking about the right-wing cultural interpretations of the Sixties to account for various social evils, or whatever.
DB: You talk a lot about your admiration for genuine political skills, and you are very complimentary toward George W. Bush in that regard. Is his melding of the Christian Right with country club conservatives merely an example of this skill or is he himself an odd amalgam that makes him particularly effective in today's Republican Party?
Ivins: One of the most notable things that Bush and Rove have been able to do — and I say Bush and Rove not in the sense of a puppet and the puppet master, but as a duo — is to straddle this gap. And that's not easy either. I think politicians use the Christian Right, and I include Bush in that. In the Shrub section, if you look at his long record as governor of Texas, you see the extent to which he was able to keep them happy without really ever giving them anything. If you identify with the Christian Right and then don't keep your promises, what does that mean? It seems cynical. I don't see Bush expending any political capital on vouchers, or his program for faith-based public funding. I think he was literally forced into the gay marriage stand. At first he didn't even want to mention it.
DB: You knew a lot more about "Shrub" than the rest of the country did before he became president. As you know, we have our own Bush brother who's a governor here. I've talked to conservatives in the banking industry here who believe that the real sharpy among the Bushes is our very own Jeb. They think he's the real class of the Bush gene line. Does that surprise you? What's your take on Jeb?
Ivins: No, that doesn't surprise me. Not at all. I would never claim to be a friend of Dubya's but I have known him in some measure from a long time ago. And that was really the consensus opinion in high school — before he went to the prep school in the East, he went to one private high school in Houston, and I went to the other, and that was the general consensus. In fact, his mother actually may have said that publicly at one point, but you'd have to check that.
DB: Poverty. Is this another I-told-you-so deal? The new stats came out on poverty and it's all gotten much worse. Of course, Texas performs horribly in this area.
Ivins: It doesn't surprise me. Although the real question is how much of it should be blamed on Bush. … I think it not only doesn't surprise me, but he deserves some of the blame, perhaps even a good chunk of it. His economic policies have favored the wealthy and left other people worse off. Failing to do anything about health care, for example, has left companies less willing to hire workers. You get an increase in part-timers, and people who work without benefits. I think there's a lot of things to hold Bush responsible for, although in fairness, poverty is a lagging indicator … it's true that the economy went to hell on Bush's watch, but that bubble was set up for that kind of break and the bubble happened on Clinton's watch.
DB: The corruption of politics by big money. 527s. Have 527s leveled the playing field more for Dems, or are they simply another manifestation of the corruption of politics by money?
Ivins: I'm against 527s. It shows how naive I can be about politics, but if I were Kerry, when Bush came out against the 527s and said, I want to eliminate them, I would have taken him up on it. I would have called his bluff.
DB: So you think the Republicans gain more by them?
Ivins: Well, the last data I saw actually showed that the Dems were benefiting more, but I still would have taken advantage of that opportunity to eliminate them and the effect they have on the electoral process. … There's my ride. I hope you have enough.
DB: Thanks.
“Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? An Evening with Molly Ivins to Benefit the ACLU Foundation of Florida, presented by FORUM 2004.” Saturday, Sept. 11, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. The program begins at 8 p.m., preceded by a one-hour cocktail reception with Ivins. General admission: $27; VIP admission, $150 (admission to the reception and seating in the first three rows) and $75 (admission to the reception and seating in the next seven rows). For reservations, call FORUM 2004 at 941-922-3080.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2004.