John, watch the language. We don’t tolerate that type of name calling on this site, even if it’s directed at somebody who deserves it.

Regardless of your thoughts on her political leanings, she cared deeply about her country and your state.

And she’s done more to keep things in line, to the benefit of Texas and the nation as a whole, than I’m betting you ever will.

It may be that those who don’t get her humor find it difficult or unseemly to laugh human foibles and frailties in general because its too close to laughing at themselves. Ivins made no bones about being a liberal, but her wit was aimed at Democrats and Republicans alike. Like anyone with a long writing career, some of her efforts were much less successful than others, still, when she was in top form she could make you laugh from the very bottom of your soul. Not because she was writing about Republicans, or Democrats, but because she was writing about — and beautifully puncturing — human absurdity, and our great capacity for self-delusion, dishonesty and pretense.

Sure, she’s hitched her wagon to that gravy train, but the gravy has been flowing for quite some time. Texas politics has been shown to be particularly suspect (redistricting, DeLay’s fundraising, Dems hightailing it out of the state) so Ivins hasn’t really ever had to do much searching for things to write about.

Respectfully disagree. Her career has been hitched to writing about the despicable details of Texas politics in general — when Democrats controlled the state she was hard on them. Now the other guys are in the catbird seat –since she’s plinking away in the same direction as always she’s now more likely to hit Rep than Dems. Eh.

It’s interesting to me how she combines excellent observation and reportage on the process of politics with truly wrong-headed analysis of the same. For instance her books are full of examples that could go straight into a “public choice economics” textbook — where cartels of florists, undertakers, hair dressers and real estate agents all converge on the Texas Legislature clamoring to be protected — or “regulated”. She sees and tells that current owners of such businesses will be grandfathered into sinecures while any upstart competitors will be force to jump thru prohibitive legal hoops — then comes out in FAVOR of regulation anyhow. “Bless their hearts, they’re small town citizens trying to make this poor sorry corner of the world a safer place and if they put a few dollars in their pockets doin’ it, well who’s got a problem with that?’

And she writes: “I was certainly under no illusions regarding Saddam Hussein, whom I have opposed through human rights work for decades.”

In all of those decades of pestering Saddam Hussein for human rights abuses, she never noticed that he had murdered hundreds of thousands of people?

We’re getting pretty desperate in our search for sanity, here.

Personally, I like Ivins and I think she often makes some pretty valid points, but she went to far down the “we killed more than they did” rabbit hole. It’s good to see her say “I was wrong.” I can’t help but feel this is going to promote some amount of healing within the reasonable middle.