My heart aches today because another one of my liberal heroes is gone. Molly Ivins died yesterday of breast cancer, she was 62 years young. My only comfort is that she joins her good friend and fellow wise cracking liberal firebrand Ann Richards in the great beyond and boy will those ladies raise the roof on that place! Ivins was my mentor in many ways, she was loud and profane, and she didn’t fit into polite society. She achieved great success but she messed up too. She had a brief but less than happy tenure as an editor at the New York Times but found her greatest happiness working in her home state of Texas, writing about that state’s very unique legislature and about George W. Bush and his family. Her insight into our current President and her ability to interpret his bullshit in my opinion is masterful.

She was a very vocal and very proud liberal. “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.” Her parents were Republicans as were mine. Even when she was terminally ill she kept up her fighting spirit. Writing in mid-January in her syndicated column Ivins encouraged anti-war protestors “We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war…We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding ‘Stop it, now!” She cut her teeth on the Vietnam War, she had changed the world then and she knew the power of the people to change the status quo now.

The thing that makes me the saddest is that there is no one quite like her or Ann Richards left to take their place. We’re left with Maureen “Little Miss Perfect” Dowd who wants to use her NY Times editorial commentaries to ridicule Hillary Clinton’s hair dos and make up when there seems to be far more important business to attend to. There’s a hole in the world of politics and political commentary that seems yawning and unfillable. For now we will savor Molly Ivins words and her legacy of laughter, wit and wisdom.