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Democracy requires a certain relish for confusion

Molly Ivins

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Molly Ivins
Age: 62 †
Born: 1944
Born: August 30
Died: 2007
Died: January 31
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
Monterey
California
Relish
Orderly
Neat
Confusion
Requires
Democracy
Certain

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I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.
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During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: “Look out! They're about to smack you around again!
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I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot of land that's good for nothing but grazing.
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Nice is a pallid virtue. Not like honesty or courage or perseverance. On the other hand, in a nation notably lacking in civility, there is much to be said for nice.
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In city rooms and in the bars where newspeople drink, you can find out what's going on. You can't find it in the papers.
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Texas is not a civilized place. Texans shoot one another a lot. They also knife, razor, and stomp one another to death with some frequency. And they fight in bars all the time.
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Of course, it has never paid much.
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We often seem to be swimming through such a miasma of sexual violence - in advertising, television programming, heavy metal, rap, films, and worst of all, in the home - that even First Amendment absolutists sometimes daydream about how nice it would be to have government-as-nanny just outlaw all this effluent.
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I think most of us become nicer as we get older, less judgmental, less full of certitude life tends to knock a few corners of us as we go through. Cancer, divorce, teenagers, and other plagues make us give up on expecting ourselves - or life - to be perfect, which is a real relief.
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Every two years, one of the most hotly contested elections in Texas is the poll taken among members of the capitol press corps to determine who are actually the ten stupidest members of the Legislature. Two years ago, there were thirty-seven official nominees and several write-ins.
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Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman
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Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left there's nothing you can do about being born liberal - fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed.
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As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.
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I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind, I think everybody everywhere is provincial, but it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Texcentric.
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Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.
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We've had trickle down economics in the country for ten years now, and most of us aren't even damp yet.
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Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided me the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life.
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This is the man (Ronald Reagan) who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency
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I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point--race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.
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I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.
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