Alas, I Am More Cynical

[fj]

What Molly Ivins taught me is that speaking truth doesn't change shit. I'd read her work and think "My god if even half of this is true, why are these people still free?" Yet they kept being free. Her columns are hilarious lists of excesses both in the Texas state and US national legislatures, and in the end, the people she despised and exposed got to vandalize their territories on and on to greater profit, and she was marginalized.

Comments

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

see, i don't think this is cynical at all. i think it's Real.
can you say why you think she was marginalized?
i don't know that much about her -- i think she was sick for a long time, and also that she tended to be condescended to by journalists from the coasts.
texas is too quirky a beat to cover for as long as she did.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

a lot of reporters (and not only they) love futility and fatalism and margins, btw. it lets them drink, or act out in whatever weird way.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought, I was not aware of this.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

But in private, Ms. Ivins, too, battled alcohol, and had her coterie of human shields; they were protecting a woman whose loneliness was as incomprehensible as it was omnipresent. She was a performer who rarely allowed herself to be offstage, which, of course, ensured that the majority of us kept our distance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/opinion/03swartz.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

[fj.livejournal.com]

I always consider people who speak facts but are not listened to as marginalized. In her case, it was the standard misogynist adjective of "shrill" and "harpy" when described by the red-state press, and "funny columnist" by the rest.

[bigsqueezer.livejournal.com]

I laughed so hard when you said this. Thanks (agree too...)