Humorist Molly Ivins has died of cancer. She was 62.
Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment and referred to President Bush as “Shrub,” died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 62. Ivins died at her home while in hospice care, said David Pasztor, managing editor of the Texas Observer, where Ivins was co-editor.
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Her first newspaper job was in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. She worked her way up at the Chronicle, then went on to the Minneapolis Tribune, becoming the first woman police reporter in the city.
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She joined The New York Times in 1976, working first as a political reporter in New York and later as Rocky Mountain bureau chief. But Ivins’ use of salty language and her habit of going barefoot in the office were too much for the Times, said longtime friend Ben Sargent, editorial cartoonist with the Austin American-Statesman. “She was just like a force of nature,” Sargent said. “She was just always on and sharp and witty and funny and was one of a kind.”
Ivins returned to Texas as a columnist for the Dallas Times-Herald in 1982, and after it closed she spent nine years with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In 2001, she went independent and wrote her column for Creators Syndicate.
Neither Ivins’ politics nor her sense of humor were my cup of tea. Regardless, she carved out a remarkable career in a field not particularly hospitable to women in her day. And 62 is far too young to die.
