Molly Ivins, Gall In The Saddle   

Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?
By Molly Ivins
Random House

Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?
By Molly Ivins
Random House
284 pages; $23

Getting fired from the New York Times may have been the best thing that ever happened to Molly Ivins. She decided to go back to Texas and start over.

Her experience isn't much different than that of another Texan, singer Willie Nelson. Willie too flunked the Big Time — in his case, Nashville. Both returned to Austin in the 1970s, to their roots, and developed their own styles and voices. Ivins built a national following while writing a column for the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald, contributing to magazines and doing essays for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Nelson...well, we know what Willie did.

The Times Herald was a lot more liberal than Dallas, which is the most conservative city in Texas, maybe in America. Oh, Democrats like to go on about how Ann Richards carried Dallas County in the most recent governor's race. But recently Steve Bartlett, a conservative Republican congressman, won the Dallas mayoral race against five opponents, most of them Democrats, without a runoff.

The Herald used to get so many complaints about Ivins it once put up a billboard that said, "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?" which became the title for this book.

How does she get away with it? Mainly because she's funny. She writes the way people here talk, a kind of Texas manic also practiced by Linda Ellerbee, Larry King (the writer, not the radio host) and the late John Henry Faulk, whom Molly much admired.

She not only writes well, she talks in sound bites. TV news beats a path to her Austin office every time there's a big local election.

For example, last year when Lesley Stahl asked her to describe the gubernatorial race, which was among the dirtiest in Texas history, Ivins said, "It's gonna be rougher'n a fistfight in a whorehouse."

If you're looking for the absurd in politics, Texas is the place. Ivins discovered it first as editor of the Texas Observer, which followed the statehouse pretty closely. Twenty years later she's still mining that mother lode.

Her current favorite Texas rep (representative, that is) is House Speaker Gib Lewis, whom she calls a "gifted malapropist." Some Gibberish she has collected includes such bons mots as: "This is unparalyzed in the state's history"; "I cannot tell you how grateful I am — I am filled with humidity"; and "I want to thank each and every one of you for having extinguished yourselves this session."

She also tells the story of another rep who staged his own shooting to generate some publicity for himself. When found out, he fled to his momma's house to avoid arrest. Texas Rangers found him hiding in a stereo cabinet. Ivins dryly drawls, "He always wanted to be the speaker."

Ivins admits to being a liberal. But unlike so many on the left nowadays, she doesn't get indignant about everything. And liberals take their licks too.

On Dukakis: "This man has got no Elvis. He needs a charisma transplant."

On former Texas Gov. Mark White, also a Democrat: "It's hard to look up to a fellow who always has his ear to the ground."

And she's no Mollyanna. In fact, she's often coarse.

"[Congressman Jack] Brooks," she writes, "does not give a flying fart about what is seemly..."

And on former Texas Gov. Bill Clements, who was infamous for his irritability, she observes: "[He's] one of those people born with a burr up his butt."

Her portrait of Ronald Reagan, however, is harsh and unleavened by humor. Even Reagan's enemies concede he is a nice guy. Not Ivins. As she sees the Great Communicator, "If the man had a brain, he would play with it."

George Bush comes off almost as badly. About the kindest thing she says of him is that his Washington isn't "dangerously ludicrous, as it was under Reagan."

The Washington press gets blistered too: "The list of what we missed during the Reagan years includes everything that mattered — we missed Iran-Contra, HUD, S&Ls, and the entire game plan until David Stockman told us what it was. And then we sat around criticizing David Stockman for a tattle-tale."

Some of the pieces assembled in this book, originally written for liberal magazines in the early 1980s, seem dated today. But many others hold up well, among them a wonderful, short history of old-time newspaper copyboys, which originally appeared in WJR in 1987.

But the essays I found most appealing were about women. "Being a Texas feminist," Ivins says, "is a particularly oxymoronic vocation." She likes to quote an old saying that goes, ""Texas is a fine place for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses."

Ivins says the Lone Star State is still hell on women, but getting better. As proof, she mentions her hairdresser, Esther Ann of La Delle's Beauty Shoppe ("spelled with two P's and an E"), where you can now get your hair dyed to match your dog. Esther Ann, she says, is into color charts just like Bergdorf Goodman in New York. "Creeping chic is coming to South Austin," Ivins asserts.

Her favorite Texas woman is undoubtedly Ann Richards, the current governor. I have seen no better blow-by-blow account of how Richards beat Clayton Williams (actually how Claytie beat himself) than hers.

~~"Texas politics is a rich vein," she says. "Politics here is like everything in Texas, just like it is everywhere else — only more so."

And Texas is big enough today for a six-foot redheaded feminist, who was too tall and gawky to be a cheerleader or Rangerette, to become an outspoken critic of its culture and politics and still fit in.

But do her fellow Texans get it?

"You know Texans," Ivins explains. "You can always tell 'em. You just can't tell 'em much."