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Whether she's writing about Bill Clinton ("The Rodney Dangerfield of presidents"), Bob Dole ("Dole contributed perhaps the funniest line of the year with his immortal observation that tobacco is not addictive but that too much milk might be bad for us. The check from the dairy lobby must have been late that week"), or cultural trends ("I saw a restaurant in Seattle that specialized in latte and barbecue. Barbecue and latte. I came home immediately"), Molly takes on the issues of the day with her trademark good sense and inimitable wit.
Anonymous
Posted December 12, 2012
First writer YAH
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Posted April 30, 2001
You may have found this Ivins book by reading or looking for Shrub, Ivins' recent evisceration of George W. Bush's record as Texas governor. This book, a collection of mid-90s essays, will feel very familiar. Ivins skewers nearly all the characters from that era, but there is never a doubt whose side she is on. It starts, roughly, with Clinton's arrival on the national scene, and procedes up until the beginning of the Lewinsky scandal. Good thing, that. It lets Molly do what she does best, which is to tear apart politicians based on their records, not on their behaviors around interns. In that regard, she gives Clinton a few well deserved licks, but sticks up for him against some of the more zany attacks he sustained (Vince Foster accustions and the like). She saves her best heat, though, for mid-90s shooting star Newt. From Contract With America on, I was always suspicious of Newt but no news outlet ever quite hand-cuffed him to a genuinely bad deed during his run. Molly does. She puts Newt to sleep early and often with 'he did, he did!' record-based journalism, mostly his dispicable distortions of welfare and feminism in policy debates. Also included are several essays on - ta da! - Governor Dubya and the early days of campaign finance reform. great reading, even in retrospect.
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Overview
Whether she's writing about Bill Clinton ("The Rodney Dangerfield of presidents"), Bob Dole ("Dole contributed perhaps the funniest line of the year with his immortal observation that tobacco is not addictive but that ...