Cheers and Jeers is a weekday post from the great state of Maine.
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment
When Molly Ivins died 18 years ago today at 62, the world lost one of its great wits, social commentators, and fighters for civil rights and social justice. The void she left was vast, which is why we’ve been posting our “Molly Ivins Moment” in C&J every Thursday since she passed. I think now more than ever we could use a good dose of Molly, so here's a Texas-size handful of her greatest hits…
» When last we left that merry band of Republican brothers in Congress, they were deregulating shit on beef.
» “Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.”
The iconic photo that accompanied most of her columns.
» Being Canadian is like living next door to the Simpsons. Here are all these patient, sensible, kind people (I swear, their real national motto is, "Now, let's not get excited") living right next to "the States," where some hideously noisy psychodrama is always going on. ... My question is this: Is there any way we could put Canadianism in pill form so Americans could take it regularly?
» On Pat Buchanan's culture-war speech at the 1992 Republican convention: "It probably sounded better in the original German."
» [I]mmigrant-bashing is such an old American tradition. Back at the time of the Revolution, many Anglo-Americans worried about the terrible number of Germans engulfing the country. Since then, we’ve managed to work up a snit over the Irish, the Jews, the Polish, the Swedes, Bolivians, Bavarians, Bosnians, Russians, Italians, Sicilians, a great variety of Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Maltese (sorry you missed that one---the Maltese once overran New York City deli counters), Cubans, Puerto Ricans and so forth. [...]
I don't see why we should stop blaming newcomers for our troubles just because they're not in charge of anything. You gotta admit, prejudice is as American as apple pie. I hear tell these Mexicans keep crossing the border so they can get on welfare and get health care and all these goodies. Funny, we don't have goodies in Texas, but they keep moving here to work anyway.
» “We get so scared of something—scared of communism or crime or drugs or illegal aliens—that we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing freedom. Never works. It's still true: the only thing to fear is fear itself.”
» The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
As I like to say, Molly Ivins was (and via her legacy still is) Red Bull for the Democratic soul.
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