Anthony Romero in The Nation:
Molly Ivins was more than one of the stars of the progressive media in her lifetime. She was the one of these stars who reached so many people with her down-home explanations and serial horse-laughs that in exchange for the money she earned for the mainstream media, they permitted her to penetrate the soul of the nation with reverberating effects.
After her education at Smith and Columbia and in Paris, her three years’ work on the Minneapolis daily marked her as one of the best reporters in the country. But she chose then to join The Texas Observer and regale its discriminating readers with the absurdities of her home state’s legislature. Hired back to the responsible big time by the New York Times, she did herself in with her boss there with her story describing a local chicken-plucking contest as a “gang pluck.” With her high intelligence, she had perceived that the way to the people’s sense of justice detours through their sense of humor. Brave, sagacious and dedicated, she then simply set forth on her own and became the only always-funny and the most widely read liberal, progressive and populist columnist in the country. Her syndication in 350 to 400 newspapers was without a parallel for a leftist columnist in the nation’s newspapers. 60 Minutes even gave her a tumble.