#molly ivins

[mswyrr]

Progressive journalist Molly Ivins did this hilarious peace about the nasty anti-sodomy laws the Texas legislature passed in the 1990s. I was reminded of it and it gave me a laugh and some relief re: the current rise of bastards like this. They can be fought and driven back into their miserable little holes.

Here's a description of the docu-series this clip is from, written in 2003, just after Supreme Court found anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional (a decision the current SCOTUS is set to overturn...):

"Given the Supreme Court's landmark decision invalidating state sodomy laws, docu "Dildo Diaries" is stuck in the unfortunate position of beating a newly dead horse. Nonetheless, this look at ridiculous governmental anti-sex measures--particularly in the Lone Star State--is an amusing item that, one hopes, will someday soon make young viewers scratch their heads in amazement at the Bad Old Days described therein."

It's just staggering. All of this has happened within my lifetime. It's scary and ugly to think about, but it's also good to see how people got around these laws before.

The bit where a queer person talks about having to ask the sex shop employee about a better "educational model" for "safe sex demonstrations" because "i was worried about losing my audience" had me in stitches lol

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cat, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

Molly Ivins

[emperornorton47]

[thereallovebug]

THIS RIGHT HERE

As the late, great Molly Ivins said:

“It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.”

Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."

We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.

[writing-relatedactivities]

Look, I do have a Puritan squatting in my head left over from the founding of the United States, grown strong on moral OCD, that whispers in my ear that to introduce any fun into serious matters is sin, but the older I get, the more I understand what Molly Ivins meant when she said: you gotta have fun. Politics affects where your children go to school and how deep you'll be buried, and there's no escape from it. So you gotta have fun. You gotta make that dumb pun on your protest sign, you gotta get together with friends for a postcard party. You gotta find a way to have a little fun, if you want to be able to keep going.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[spotlightstory]

I miss Molly Ivins. Here she is talking about Truth and Journalism in 1991.

[somethingtocallmine]

[fuckyeahquotesposts]

The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.

Molly Ivins

[mayra-quijotescx]

real No Children hours in the Lege rn

the Texas Tribune made a whole page for this latest shit

[stinkahny]

Missing my Texas liberal ladies

How I miss Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas, and Molly Ivins, a reporter for I think a Dallas paper, but I'm not sure about that. Both of them had very quick wits, and would use their wit to pin right wing idiots against the nearest wall.

[malsperanza]

The great Molly Ivins once said, "Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doing it. Be outrageous... rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through celebrating the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was!"

On June 26, 2015, eight years ago, the US Supreme Court issued its ruling making same-gender marriage legal. That evening I went over to Stonewall on Sheridan Square to join the impromptu party. The World Trade Center, visible down 6th Ave., was in full drag.

[mariacallous]

We are at a time in our national life where the political system is pretty frankly corrupt. I know that many of you despise organized politics. You’re young and idealistic and entitled to do that. But the corruption can be fixed and the heritage is too important to be let go. We are all of us collectively the heirs to the most magnificent political tradition any people has ever received. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We hold that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights and that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.”

Those principles are so profoundly revolutionary that they still echo with great force around the world after more that 200 years. There are people today who are dying for the chance to live under those principles. They died in South Africa. They died at Tiananmen Square. They are dying today in Myanmar. And in this country we are in some danger of throwing away that entire legacy out of boredom, and cynicism and inanition. And I hear constantly people say, “Well, I really just don’t care much for politics;” “Ah well, they’re all crooks, there’s nothing I can do.” People have a million reasons for not getting involved. The thing is, you can’t back out of it, it’s not your choice. You can’t look at politics in this country as though it were a television program, or a picture on a wall that you could stand back and look at and decide whether or not you liked it.

Your entire life—the warp and woof of your life—is going to be bounded by political decisions made in city halls and state capitals and the White House, and the Capitol in Washington. How deep you will be buried when you die, the qualifications of the people who prescribe your eyeglasses, whether or not the dye you use on your hair will cause cancer. All of those, and many, many more things that touch your life everyday in a thousand ways. Whether or not your car is safe when you get into it, all of these things are affected by government. You are involved, whether you like the picture or not. And if you don’t like it, you really have an obligation to change it.

Molly Ivins, from her commencement speech to Scripps College graduates in May of 2003

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Every once in awhile I remember I'm old...

...and that I rmember things and people from decades ago vividly, as if it were, well, yesterday. It's times like this that it all catches up with me, when I realize there are at least two generations of people who have no fucking clue who Molly Ivins was, or how important she was to Texas women at the time, and to those who were aspiring writers. I was good friends with one, and remember her undying admiration for Molly Ivins, and I remember reading her pieces and just going "yeah! You go girl!" So to correct my error, here:

[whatbigotspost]

Damn, y'all. This is very, very bad news:

I have an unshakable belief that "democracy" is a joke in any place where a free media cannot exist. As I've eluded to many times, I'm a big believer in more progressive leaning sources like NPR, the Texas Tribune (the source link in that^ story), and formerly, the Texas Observer. Things are NOT in a good place right now, financially, for any of those entities.

This trend is something that anyone who cares about the threat of the rising Christofascist right wing extremists should be paying a LOT OF FUCKING ATTENTION TO. If you can, you should be donating to any entity you depend on, like this. It's why I'm a member of my local NPR station. I mean, I can't help but feel like we are about 2 seconds away from just accepting that algorithms like TikTok are going to drive all of the "information" we have, and I hopefully don't need to explain why we'll all be thoroughly fucked if that happens. Here's an Austin local writer/journalist I trust, with more behind-the-scenes input about what happened w/ the Texas Observer.

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 8.30

Beer Birthdays

Samuel Whitbread (1720)

Johan Van Dyck (1975)

Stacy Marie Fuson; St. Pauli Girl 2005 (1978)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Lewis Black; comedian (1948)

Molly Ivins; writer (1944)

Fred MacMurray; actor (1908)

John Swigert Jr.; astronaut (1931)

Ted Williams; Boston Red Sox LF (1918)

Famous Birthdays

Elizabeth Ashley; actor (1939)

Geoffrey Beene; fashion designer (1927)

Joan Blondell; actor (1909)

Shirley Booth; actor (1898)

Timothy Bottoms; actor (1951)

Warren Buffett; gazillionaire (1930)

Michael Chiklis; actor (1963)

Robert Crumb; cartoonist (1943)

Jacques-Louis David; French artist (1748)

Agoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa; vineyard importer (1812)

Cameron Diaz; actor (1972)

John Gunther; writer (1901)

Jean-Claude Killy; French skier (1943)

Peggy Lipton; actor (1947)

Huey Long; politician (1893)

Raymond Massey; actor (1896)

Tug McGraw; NY Mets/Philadelphia Phillies P (1944)

John Phillips; singer, songwriter (1935)

Andy Roddick; tennis player (1982)

Ernest Lord Rutherford; New Zealand physicist (1871)

Theodor Svedberg; Swedish chemist (1884)

Frederique van der Wal (1967)

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff; Dutch physicist (1852)

J. Alden Weir; artist (1852)

Kitty Wells; country singer (1919)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; English writer (1797)