Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins

BY Margaret Engel and Allison Engel

CHARACTERS

MOLLY is a tall, brassy, middle-aged reporter.

HELPER is an impassive male copy clerk.

SETTING

The suggestion of a newsroom past its prime

TIME

2007 and earlier

1 Scene One (A desk with a typewriter and computer on it, along with newspapers, books, note pads, files, pens, pencils, cups, etc. The nameplate on the desk reads “Molly Ivins.” Behind the desk is an old metal swivel chair on rollers.) (The stage space is filled with empty desks and chairs, stacked at odd angles. There is an A.P. teletype machine.)

(At rise, MOLLY is leaning back in the chair, her bootclad feet crossed on the desktop. She’s staring off into the middle distance. A long moment or two pass.)

MOLLY. I’m writing. This is what writing looks like. I’m letting some ideas steep. Which is not the same as letting them stew. Every reporter with a brain – which is a subset of the profession and by no means the majority – knows that writing is seventy-five-per cent thinking, fifteen percent typing, and ten per cent caffeine. But have an editor pass by your cubicle and see you not pounding away at the keyboard, he’ll stick his stubby little neck in and say: “What’s the matter, darlin’, nothin’ to write about? ’Cause if you got nothin’ to write about, I’ll give you somethin’ to write about.” And you say sweetly back: “Why, that is ever so kind of you, but I do in fact have something to write about, thank you, so you just go on back to that early retirement program you call your office and pop yourself another Pepto Bismol.” (looks at her desk, papers, typewriter)

2 RED HOT PATRIOT Yes, indeed, I do have something to write about… (puts on her glasses and peers at what she’s written) What’ve we got so far…? (reads aloud) “My old man is one of the toughest sons of bitches God ever made.” (takes her glasses off) Well, that’s it. Hell, it’s a start. I should really think about that line, though. Take it out on the "floor for a spin, see if it stays upright. (glasses on again, reads) “My old man is one of the toughest sons of bitches God ever made.” (Thinks for a beat; then she types for a few seconds, then reads aloud again.) “I say this after second thought…” (thinks some more, types some more, reads) “…and I say it again after third thought.” (sits back, mock worn-out) That was exhausting. Writing is hard! If the truth be told – and wouldn’t that be a novelty – (MUSIC: Guitar strumming) it’s no small thing to write about a person, especially when that person is a relative, exceedingly so when he’s your father, and damn near impossible when he’s still alive, which – fortunately or not, depending on your point of view – is the case. (MUSIC fades.) My father’s gonna read this no matter what, no matter how sick and worn out he is from this surgery or that treatment. My father would point out that I’m marking

RED HOT PATRIOT 3 time here, using my well-worn rhetorical tricks to string out sentences without saying anything. If he was here, he’d say: “Uh-huh, and what’s your point?” Well, sir. I am working on that. (SOUND: harp glisse as visual of a newspaper library appears) Oh, now isn’t that a pretty sight? Some people like sunsets, a field of lilies, a baby’s face. This’ll do me fine. One of the nicer things about a newspaper office is that when you’re stumped on a piece like I am today and there’s a deadline starin’ at you, every sort of resource you’d ever want is right…here. This is the morgue. Not the type frequented by those who have passed over to a better world. This is where reporters go when their memories have been hazed over by the effects of conviviality. The morgue is where the good stuff is kept – back numbers, clippings, photo files, dust that smells like honey. Pretty much every time I visited the morgue to find out the exact date of this kickback or the actual name of that stripper slash legislative assistant, I’d end up drifting off into a sea of yellow newsprint describing the triumphs and follies of towering figures long ago cut down… (SOUND: seagulls cawing) (Visual of Molly sailing) I did not expect that to come out of the stack. That’s me on the General’s boat, in happier times, as they say. General Jim is what my dad is called. We had some good, well, moments on that boat. Of course, he was always the captain. (visual of Ivins family portrait) (MUSIC: “A Summer Place”) Now there’s the whole crew. Mother, sister, brother, the General. We were a very “good” family. Good schools, country club, fancy summer camps, Europe. It was pretty swell…mostly.

4 RED HOT PATRIOT (MOLLY refers to the portrait.) There I am. This is at a debutante ball or some such virgin sacrifice. Six feet tall with red hair and freckles. My mother said I looked like “a Saint Bernard among greyhounds.” I was quick enough even then to know that was not a compliment. Not that my mother meant it unkindly. My mother tended not to think things through, which is not to say she was unintelligent. Mom was nobody’s fool, just seriously ditzy. But charmingly so, ditzy as a kind of social achievement. A lot of times recently, I wanna call her up and ask her something, about my father, about herself, even about me, but that window of opportunity has closed. (SOUND: Drumbeats) The Ivins are…were…are…a fighting family. At least when it comes to dinner table warfare. Every evening at five fifty-five – the cocktail hour – my dad would turn our house into a war zone. Part of it was the lubrication, but he had a level of bile that could be triggered by a Shirley Temple. Every word bellowed across the china was a litmus test of what was goin’ on in the wider world. Plus he couldn’t hear very well, the result of standing too close to the 16-inch guns during World War Two. So everybody was always yelling at him just to be heard and he was yellin’ at the rest of us because yellin’ was what he did. (A bell rings. Four times.)

(MOLLY looks over at the A.P. teletype machine as it chugs out a sheet of paper.) Y’all know what that is. That’s the A.P. wire machine. Four bells means an “Urgent” message. Five bells means a “Bulletin.” Ten bells is a “Flash.” Ten bells is only for very, very important news, such as, “The President has pronounced nuclear correctly.”

RED HOT PATRIOT 5 (A bespectacled, nebbish-like HELPER dashes on stage and rips the sheet of wire copy from the machine and hands it to MOLLY. She looks at us.)

MOLLY. I didn’t realize this gig came with a copy kid.

(HELPER exits. MOLLY calls after him.) Do you get coffee, too, or am I shit-out-of-luck here? (looks at the wire copy) What’ve we got? Somethin’ to help me with this pitiful thing I’m tryin’ to pound out…? (reads) …Hang on, this isn’t news. This is old. (holds up the wire copy for us to see) “Elvis Presley Dies.” (looks at the machine) I think the A.P. has a time-lag problem. (looks at the wire copy again) Why is a 30-year-old wire service obit comin’ through to my…? Wait. This isn’t the A.P. obit. This is my obit. I mean, my obit of Elvis Presley. I wrote his obituary for The New York Times. The Times likes to say that it follows the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared.” So, it’s usually ready to go with an obit of any prominent person who might croak. But Elvis, you will recall, died untimely. On that fateful August 16th, 1977, the Times was not prepared. A grave Times-ian panic ensued. The paper has music critics by the note-load: classical, opera, jazz, even rock; but it wasn’t exactly the kind of paper where Elvis fans worked. Except for me. They knew I was one, see, ’cause I have this funny accent. So I wrote Elvis’ obit for The New York Times. I followed the bizarre Times practice of referring to him throughout as “Mr. Presley,” as in: “Recently, Mr. Presley has been plagued with issues of ‘caloric intake.’ ”

6 RED HOT PATRIOT Mr. Presley also died while on the crapper, but the Times wouldn’t go near that. The next day we sold more papers than we had since President Kennedy was shot. Quickly waking up to the fact that a king had been reigning for 25 years and they didn’t know it, the editors sent me to Memphis for the mass mourning. I was goin’ to Graceland. This was the same week the Shriners and the World’s Largest Cheerleading Camp were in town. None of it surprised me. I know from August. Reporters never take a vacation late in the summer. The news business lives for the weird, the astonishing, the absurd. Somehow, it all explodes in August. The place was crawling with bald fellas wearin’ they l’il red fezzes, ridin’ up and down on they tricycles and tootin’ they little horns. I was trying to sleep in a dormitory with a herd of teenaged girls who did handsprings end over end down the hall to the john and cheered while brushin’ their teeth. Shriners, cheerleaders, hysterical Elvis fans. You gotta love a culture that brings us all together. (Bell rings. 4 times.)

(MOLLY looks over at the A.P. teletype machine as it chugs out a sheet of paper. She starts towards it, but the

HELPER zooms in, tears off the wire copy and hands it to her. She opens her mouth to speak, but he zooms off again. MOLLY calls after him.)

MOLLY. I’ll take that coffee now! (looks at the wire copy) Oh, this my first piece for The Texas Observer. Ya’ll subscribe to the Observer. You don’t? You should. A girlfriend sent me copies of the Observer when I was at Smith College. That’s where girls of good

RED HOT PATRIOT 7 families were sent to learn the classics. Reading The Texas Observer at Smith was like slipping a copy of MAD magazine into the Episcopal hymnal. Back then, the Observer was a skinny political rag that was nonstop furious about the treatment of blacks. The Observer was my gateway drug. It gave me shouting points to use against the General. Reading it, I learned that Houston’s Fourth Ward actually existed. That’s the black neighborhood with no sidewalks or grocery stores. Houston’s finest refused to acknowledge it. Once you realize they’re lying about race, everything else follows. Everything they – he -- ever said to me can be called into question. He never thought that through. Should’ve. The last summer I spent under the General’s roof was when I came home from college and got my first job in the library – sorry, morgue – of The Houston Chronicle, also known as “the Chronk.” The General thought it was low-class work, but that made me love it all the more, and I loved it from Day One. (A visual of a newsroom, circa 1963. All the reporters are men wearing ties and white shirts.) Now, what is wrong with this picture? That’s right, they’re all men. Actually I am in that shot. I’m standing behind the coat rack behind the water cooler behind the pillar with the naked cowgirl calendar. If you count the naked cowgirl, there are two of us. In those days, at the legislature, the senate pages all were young women. One day one of these young ladies walked by, and the guy from The Dallas Morning News jabs me in the ribs and says, “Look at the ass on that girl!” Then The Houston Chronicle jabs me from the other side and says, “And look at that pair of knockers!” It was at that moment, I knew I had become one of the boys.

8 RED HOT PATRIOT It’s not that the boys didn’t hit on me, too, au contraire. It is just that no editor ever looked at me and said, “Oh, you poor, sweet, fragile little thing. We can’t send you to cover a riot.” It was always, “Ivins, there’s a four alarm fire at the grain silo, get your ass in there and interview the flames!” I remember when a phone call came in about a domestic murder in the Fourth Ward. I stood up to go cover it but my editor stopped me. “Sit down. That ain’t news. Those people are always killing each other. Cheap it out.” Cheap it out? That’s newspaper code for one paragraph buried on the back page. In Houston, even motorcycle gangs got better coverage. One time the city editor sent me to interview some Hell’s Angels. When I got back, he said, “That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt sorry for those bastards.” (visual of Molly in leather, astride a motorcycle) (MUSIC: Motorcycle music) I liked those fellas. Reminded me of me. They liked to ride fast and laugh loud and drink like a desert during a three-day rain. Every man I ever spent time with drank a lot. (visual of Jim Ivins) The General. (visual of Bob Bullock) Bob Bullock. (visual of Ann Richards) Ann Richards…Well, Ann wasn’t a man, but she drank like one. Men drink for all sorts of reasons. If you’re a Texas man, you don’t need a reason. A reason would be a waste of effort. But if you’re a woman, well, it’s like

RED HOT PATRIOT 9 Ann’s line about Ginger Rogers dancin’ backwards in high heels: You gotta drink twice as much and carry it three times as well, and you damn well better be funny. Nobody likes a mopey, down-in-the-dumps drunk girl. They want Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, wisecracks and snappy come-backs. My first job, at the Cronk, we drank at The Press Club. Second job, the Trib in Minneapolis, we drank at The Little Wagon. They had an open phone line to the newsroom behind the bar, so you could scurry back if an editor was lookin’ for ya. Third job, at the Observer, we drank in the office. Best of that bunch? The Observer, hands down. For one thing, the Observer had an official office dog. Mine. Her name was “Shit.” I always wanted a dog with that name, so I could go out back and scream “Shit” whenever the occasion called for it. Shit’s only interest in life was food. Naturally, she developed a fabulous impersonation of a starving animal, made more impressive by the fact that she was grossly fat. She’d pee on the rug, sit in cactus, steal steaks…I had that dog for 15 years. It seemed longer. When she finally got hit by a car, Shit was no mere dead dog by the side of the road. Nope. Biggest mess you ever saw, and I had to clean it up. With my pal, Kaye. (visual of Kaye Northcott) This is the other reason the Observer was the best of the bunch. Kaye Northcott. Man, did the two of us get away with some murder. Two Texas gals in our 20s, put in charge of the state’s only independent political magazine. It wasn’t easy keeping afloat. When you’re anti-war liberals in oil country, advertisers are scarce. Our salaries made us eligible for food stamps. We stole our pencils from the governor’s office! After every issue was put to bed we’d have a Final Friday party. Cold beer and 10 RED HOT PATRIOT hot food make up for a lot. But hell, we had a voice. Kaye Northcott. What an editor. Mutt and Jeff. Kaye’s 5 feet short, doesn’t drink, thinks tobacco’s evil and, worse yet, she’s tidy. Which, I will admit, did come in handy vis-à-vis that mess on the road formerly known as “Shit.” (MUSIC: Canned Heat) Kaye and I traveled the state on a kinda progressive underground railroad. Some of our best stories came about ’cause of where our car would happen to break down. (MUSIC ends) As for food and lodging, we’d get a list of the Observer’s subscribers in whatever direction we were headed, then when we’d get within local rates, we’d find a pay phone, call ’em up, and they’d say, “You’re from the Observer?! Come on over…Stay the night!” By the time we rolled up to their front door, they’d have called the other liberal in town, and the four of us would have one whale of a party. Everything at the Observer was sweat and scramble, but it was worth it because…because so many of our readers looked to us for help, for a connection. And we could do that. I loved working at the Observer. Best six years of my life. And then I left. Why? The glittering prize. The New York Times. (MUSIC: “New York, New York”) The Holy Grail of news hounds. (visual of Molly wearing Statue of Liberty hat) So from the Observer I did go – to the Big Apple, where I was miserable at five times my previous salary. The New York Times, where they didn’t allow dogs or bare feet in the newsroom. The New York Times, where my copy got de-clawed and neutered.

RED HOT PATRIOT 11 Example. Here’s what I wrote: “The fella has a beer gut that belongs in the Smithsonian.” Here’s what they ran: “The gentleman has a protuberant abdomen.” (feigns sleep) Well, you know editors: They’re mice training to be rats. Their first move was to exile me…to the briar patch – but it was wunnerful. I was named chief of the Times’ Rocky Mountain bureau, staff of one. I got to roam the West, hunting for news. I could breathe easier out there, but the food! I am a Marlboro and beer girl, but I did miss eating anything green. This was meat-and- potatoes country. I’d a given my left butt cheek for a salad. One time, in Montana, my steak arrived with a tiny sprig of parsley on top, and I wolfed the parsley down and left the meat. The waitress looked at me with what I think was pity and said, “Goddamn, honey, if I’d knowd you was going to eat it, I’d of washed it.” Another time, I was covering a chicken killing festival in New Mexico. They sit around and drink a lot of beer, listen to music and pluck chickens. So, naturally, I called it a “gang pluck.” I knew it wouldn’t make it into the paper, but I liked to make the rim rats on the copy desk spit up their coffee every now and then. My editor in New York, Abe Rosenthal, called to read me the riot act. I tried to explain it was a good play on words, but he wasn’t having any of it. “Gang pluck is an allusion to gang fuck. You were trying to get our readers to think of the word ‘fuck!’” “Damn it, Abe, you are a hard man to fool.” The Times hired me because they wanted to spice up their good gray image with some pungent prose and snappy patter, so I did what I do. And they did what they do: They fired my ass.

12 RED HOT PATRIOT My epitaph should read: She Never Made a Shrewd Career Move. (MUSIC: Guitar strumming) I wish I could say I write and do these things because I can’t help myself, but most of it’s just back-talk I wish I’d said to my father. The French call it esprit de l’escalier, the brilliant zinger you think of just a little too late. (MUSIC fades) I’m complaining, aren’t I?

(MOLLY goes to the desk and looks at what she’s written. She rushes through the lines we’ve heard before.) Old man, sumbitch, second thought, third… (types) “I have known him for 62 years, and I’ve never heard him whine or complain about anything…He is a stoic to the bone.” This kind of creative angst is not my norm. I am known for my joi de vivre, as we say in Waco, especially the joi associated with my chosen profession. And it’s not because we win so much of the time. Mostly, we’re spitting in the ocean. The best you can do is puncture some balloons, make the assholes sleep a little less at night, make ’em look in the mirror and know they are frauds. (MUSIC: Guitar strumming) I suppose those little victories are a thin kind of blanket to cover me for not having a husband, kids, money…pretty much all the things most people want. I did have Hank Holland. The first love of my life. He crashed his motorcycle. For a long time, I died there with him. Then there was my sweet biologist. The draft board grabbed him before he could line up his teaching job. He hated the war, but he must have wanted to go on some level. We fought about it. After he shipped out, I watched the

RED HOT PATRIOT 13 news every night – thinking I might see him. Isn’t that crazy? (MUSIC fades) Then his mom got the visit. It was a nighttime fire fight. Single bullet to the brain. That beautiful brain.

(MOLLY walks to the rear of the stage and puts up one hand. A visual of the Vietnam memorial appears. She touches the names.) The Vietnam memorial. I was not prepared for the impact. To walk down into it was like the war itself, like going into a dark valley. Damned if there was any light. Just death. When you get closer to the two walls, the sheer number of names starts to stun you. It is terrible, there in the peace and the pale sunshine. (MUSIC: “Gimme Shelter”) The Vietnam War cost 123 billion dollars. I’ve always wondered how much that one bullet cost. Sixty-three cents? A dollar twenty? Someone knows. Stupid, fucking war!…Gave me life-long issues with rage. (a bitter laugh) Thank God for that, huh? Thank God for life-long rage… (MUSIC fades) And thank God for Texas. Lord, but I do love Texas. It’s a harmless perversion. I love the gritty, down-on-the ground quality of Texans, our love of a good yarn, the piss and vinegar of our speech, that abiding interest in kin, even unto the in-laws of second cousins. I like the pleasant open vulgarity of Texans. Take that great song from Lubbock. Scholars believe it’s the only country-western title ever written with the correct use of the subjunctive: “I Wish I Were in Dixie Tonight, But She’s Out of Town.”

14 RED HOT PATRIOT (SOUND: Guitar with gunshots, bar fight) (visual of the Texas Capitol) The Austin Fun House. I call it the “Lege,” home of the laziest, most corrupt, most incompetent, most entertaining bunch of lawmakers on earth. Love at first sight. Heaven on a stick. (MUSIC fades) I would denounce some sorry sumbitch in the Lege as “an egg-suckin’ child molester who runs on all fours and has the brains of an adolescent pissant,” and the next day the sumbitch would spread out his arms and say: “Baby, yew put mah name in yore paper!” Tell you a secret. I can speak three languages, thank you Smith College. But when I became an “arthur,” as we say in East Texas, I needed words with a little salt and chile on ’em. Let me tell you why. Because I was dealing with morons. (SOUND: Snap of a whip) (visual of Mike Martin) Representative Mike Martin. He was a Capitol legend. Mike Martin hired a cousin to shoot him, then blamed the attack on a “satanic and communistic cult.” He was found out, he ran away and was caught hiding in his mother’s stereo cabinet. He always did want to be Speaker. Who else? Who else? (SOUND: Snap of a whip) (visual of Gib Lewis) Gib Lewis. Mangles our mother tongue something fierce. Naturally, everyone calls his patois “Gibberish.” Imagine trying to take notes on this: “This is adnormal. It is unparalyzed in state history. You should not fire people but do it through employee nutrition. I

RED HOT PATRIOT 15 want to thank each and every one of you for having extinguished yourselves this session. I am filled with humidity.” (SOUND: Snap of a whip) (visual of many goofy-looking Texas politicians) Look at them all. They are a gift to my profession. Can you believe God gave me all this material for free? (visual of Bob Bullock) Bob. We saw his picture before didn’t we? Yes. During the AA Hall of Fame. Bob Bullock. My pistol-packing mad genius tour guide. Bob drove like a banshee, got into fistfights and was a real bad alky. When he wasn’t dryin’ out in what he called “drunk school,” he was our secretary of state, then comptroller and later, lieutenant governor. Once, drunk, he crawled into the back seat of a stranger’s car and passed out. The driver starts up without noticin’ him. When they hit Interstate 35, Bob comes to. He pops up… (SOUND: screeching brakes) and says, “Hi! I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Bob Bullock. Your secretary of state.” Bob could wrap his big ol’ paws around that Capitol and force those lazy, greedy bastards to do something. Afternoons, about 4:30, I’d get a call at my desk. “Molly, you goddamned better get your effin’ ass over here if you want me to talk to you.” Which meant it was drinkin’ time with Professor Bob. What a teacher! His textbook seemed to cover the whole state. He knew every single budget trick those rodeo clowns ever tried. Once I ventured to ask Bob why there had never been any reports of gay-bashing in

16 RED HOT PATRIOT Midland, home of the oil rich and such. I figured there must’ve been at least a few incidents that got covered up. Bob set me straight. “Honey, there’s no gay bashing in Midland ’cause there’s no gay who’ll come out of the closet for fear people’ll think he’s a Democrat.” (visual of George W. Bush) Oh, fuck. It’s him, isn’t it? I must’ve said the magic word. What was it? Midland? Gay-bashing? Ignorant? (visual of George W. Bush with Bob Bullock) Shrub – I thought up that name! – was brought up in Midland. W. was the one Republican governor Bob thought he could work with. And he did. He taught Shrub things – just like he did me – and so helped make him a success and a political star. Thanks, Bob. I knew George W. back when we were in high school in Houston. We ran in the same social circle. After college, he started to live the life of his parents. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I despair of the press ever seeing through him. It’s incredible that they keep reporting that he can speak Spanish. No one ever notices that he always says the same two sentences and then they cue the mariachis. The man is not bi-lingual. He is bi-ignorant. Instead of one thousand points of light, we got one dim bulb. Jokes are very important to me, a fact you may have gleaned by now. But they are a means to an end. When people laugh, they open up their ears and hear you. (SOUND: Tick, Tick, Tick…) (visual of 60 Minutes-style stopwatch) But they didn’t listen too well when I got that gig on 60 Minutes. People laughed at my jokes. They just ignored what I was talkin’ about. The TV folks were afraid of my politics. They wouldn’t let me be me. They even tried to

RED HOT PATRIOT 17 gussie me up for the camera. I always said Ann Richards got elected governor of Texas because of her hair. ’Cause the higher the hair, the closer to God. But that look didn’t work for me. Those bright TV lights can blind you. Make you think people are actually payin’ attention. I thought jokes could keep outrage alive, but maybe they just keep it at arm’s length… (Bell rings. Four times.)

(MOLLY looks offstage right. Then she looks offstage left. Nobody. She sighs, stands and starts to the teletype machine, and –)

(The HELPER zooms on, tears off the wire copy and hands it to her.)

MOLLY. You’re a tricky little pisser, aren’t you?

(HELPER zooms off again. MOLLY looks at the wire copy.) This is about John Henry Faulk. One of my heroes. (visual of John Henry Faulk) Our greatest Texas storyteller. The networks didn’t like his politics, either. If you want to know why I am burning’, it’s because John Henry lit the match. John Henry got blacklisted in 1956 – it was in the McCarthy era – but he did not go gently into that dark night. He promptly sued the sons of bitches, won a huge libel award and was honored up to his eyebrows by freedom lovers everywhere. He never saw any of the money, and learned you can’t eat honor. Rest of his life, he made a slim living as an after-dinner speaker. (visual of two little boys as a Texas Ranger and a sheriff) Johnny was seven years old and a captain in the Texas Rangers. His little pal Boots Cooper was the sheriff. I can see those two boys loping down on their brooms to the henhouse at Johnny’s farm. They were told to get rid of a chicken snake. Now I myself have never been nose to nose with a chicken snake, but I took his word that it will just scare the living shit out of you. That snake reared up. Scared the boys so bad they tried to

18 RED HOT PATRIOT leave the henhouse at the same time, doing considerable damage to both themselves and the door. Johnny’s momma called out: “Boys, now you know perfectly well a chicken snake cannot hurt you.” And Boots said, “Yes, ma’am, but there’s some things’ll scare you so bad, you hurt yourself.” Immortal words. From a seven year-old. Funny what fear will do. We get so rattled by some Big Scary Thing – communism or crime, or hell, even sex – we think we can make ourselves safer by giving up some of our rights. John Henry said, “When you make yourself less free, you are not safer. You are just less free.” When John Henry died, I vowed to keep speechifying for the ACLU and all of his other fightin’ groups. For nigh on fifteen years, at least once a month, even in the throes of a massive hangover, I have staggered onto a plane and arrived sometime later at Fluterville or Lard Lake or some such desperate place where citizens need help. I say unto you, you do not know what courage is until you have sat in the basement of a Holiday Inn in Fritters, Alabama, with eight brave souls who are fixing to form a chapter of the ACLU. Usually it’s led by a lone librarian who has been driven to this extreme by some local pinheads just itchin’ to trash the Bill of Rights. There is not one thing wrong with the liberties set forth in the Declaration and the Constitution. The only problem is, the founding fathers left out poor people and black people and gay people and female people. It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties in the Constitution to everyone in America. It is the ordinary folks who are gonna save us. I find heroes all over hell and gone, just like that librarian – Americans who are tough, sassy, brave, smart. They RED HOT PATRIOT 19 get pissed-off, they fight like hell, they start all over – whatever it takes. It is so damn uplifting that I put the ACLU and the Observer in my will. My legacy will be helping folks be a pain in the ass to those in power. I kept John Henry’s picture above my desk, always. I think John Henry and my father were very similar men, actually, if you ignore their diametrically opposed political viewpoints and general outlook on life.

(MOLLY looks at the wire copy in her hand. Then she looks at us, faux bemused. MOLLY finds a folder in her desk, adds the obit, picks up another folder and walks away from the desk.) It strikes me I may have given the impression that my primary contribution to the journalistic field has been in the art of the posthumous assessment. Hell, no, I hate writing obits. Of course when one has reached an elevated status such as befits my rarified hoo-haw, one no longer writes anything as lowly as an obit. One pens “appreciations.” (MUSIC: Guitar strumming) Bob. I didn’t want to write an appreciation of you, Professor. I was too mad at you for making Shrub look good. Hell, I owe you so much. Annie…writing’ about you. That was a hard one, too. (beat) The ACLU got mad at Annie once about a Christmas manger scene set up at the Capitol. But Ann said, “Oh, why don’t we just let it be. That’s probably as close as three wise men will ever get to the Texas Legislature.” I loved her. What a heart. (visual of Molly’s mother) And my mother. She died last New Year’s Day at a Hoppin’ John party, right in the middle of eating black-eyed peas. Here’s what I wrote: “My mother, who was a lifelong Republican, could not stand Nixon. Not because he bombed Cambodia. No, for her, it was 20 RED HOT PATRIOT his bad manners. When a man tells the waiters at the White House to pour cheap wine for his guests but serve him the good stuff, well, that is something my mother would not forgive.” My mother was sorta ambivalent about me. My dad’s more clear-cut. I hate his world and he hates mine. I wrote about my mother every now and again, but I never once wrote about him. Not in years of columns. Til today.

(MOLLY looks across the stage at her desk and calls –) How’re things goin’ over there? Ya’ done yet? Pace yourself. Don’t strain your thesaurus now.

(MOLLY shakes her head and sighs.) If I was my own editor, I’d’a fired me by now.

(MOLLY goes to her desk.) It is so fucking unfair not to be in control and still be in Texas. I do not mean that. Let me try it again. It’s so unfair, but at least I’m in Texas. See, I can edit myself when I want to.

(MOLLY lights a cigarette, sits in chair, listening to music and smoking. MUSIC: “Memories of East Texas.” MUSIC ends.) There have been times, Texas, when I have run from you. I wanted to go somewhere people talked about something besides the weather and football. I went from New York to Denver to Boston to Paris – the one in France – and I learned that folks everywhere mostly talk about the weather and football. So I ducked under the moonshadow and came back to Texas. Continuing on my life’s goal of working for every news operation in my sovereign state, I took a job with The Dallas Times Herald. They promised I could write whatever I wanted. Here’s what happened.

RED HOT PATRIOT 21 I was writing about Jim Collins, a Republican congressman from Dallas, who was reaching such fresh heights of human stupidity that I wrote, “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.” (SOUND: Many ringing phones) The paper got some phone calls. (visual of billboard “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”) So they slapped up these billboards to support me and the First Amendment. I’d like to think James Madison would have been proud. See, Texas ain’t all what people think it is. Just mostly. Personally, I always root for the Speaker of the Texas House to go down. I do not wish him ill; it’s just a matter of political tradition. Six out of the last seven House Speakers have been indicted for one thing or another, the exception being the one who was shot to death by his wife. She was indicted but not convicted, because in Texas, we recognize public service when we see it. The deceased was a Democrat, as was every Texas speaker until recently. See, Republicans are a fairly new phenomenon, because in the old days, children, there were no Republicans in Texas. Young people used to call home from college to report to their parents when they’d actually met one. All we had were conservative Democrats and liberal Democrats. Back in the day folks would bring Granny and the kids, lay out a picnic and settle down to hear a Democrat explain in plain words the wrongs of Jim Crow, of McCarthyism, of communism, of the oil companies and gutless politicians. Then we became waterlogged with Republicans. On accounta LBJ finally doing the right thing on civil rights. We lost the South for three generations. And countin’. It’s called

22 RED HOT PATRIOT backlash. (MUSIC: “Happy Trails.” Visual of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat) And along came the Gipper. And his shiny new Hollywood Morning in America. I know Ronald Reagan was a likeable guy and he took a good picture, but Ronnie’s magic moments were so… special. Recall, if you will, the immortal remark he made to the Lebanese foreign minister after that gentleman had finished a half-hour lecture on the tangled politics of his country. Said the Gipper: “Y’know, your nose looks just like Danny Thomas.” (Visual of Reagan morphs into George H. W. Bush in a cowboy hat.) The Gipper passed the football to Poppy, George Bush the Elder. Poppy said, when reminding us how close he was to Reagan: “For seven and a half years we’ve had triumphs, we’ve made mistakes, we’ve had sex. Er, setbacks, we’ve had setbacks!” This from the same fella who said of Walter Mondale, “I’ll put my manhood up against his any day.” Somewhere, Dr. Freud is doin’ a spit-take. (Visual of George H. W. Bush morphs into George W. Bush in a cowboy hat.) Then Poppy passed his putter to George Junior. Junior – well, actually his minders, Karl and Dick – took his daddy’s crony capitalism and made it bigger and badder. I spent six years watchin’ Dubya play governor. I talked myself hoarse sounding the alarm on him, column after column. After he became president, my friend Lou Dubose and I even wrote a book about him. Then W. was re-elected. We had to write another book. We were tempted to say: “If y’all had read the first book, we wouldn’t’ve had to write the second one.” Those of us who knew Shrub when he was governor were very seriously not amazed by what he did in Washington. We remembered when he said: “I’d like to have the opportunity to show Washington what to do

RED HOT PATRIOT 23 with a budget surplus.” Well, did he ever! He disappeared that in record time. Next time I tell you someone named Bush should not be president of the United States, please pay attention. Remember what we got after 9/11? Anxious and patriotic Americans waited to be led by their President. What did Shrub do? He told the American people the greatest contribution they could make was to go shopping. The Shrub provided endless material. He also provided gravestones for thousands of people with families who loved them. And we’d better not mention the 255,000 Iraqis we’ve killed. It’s damn hard to convince people you’re killing them for their own good. Don’t know if you noticed this, but from the beginning of the Iraq war, anyone who spoke up and said, “This is like Vietnam” had right-wingers land on them and screech: “THIS IS NOT LIKE VIETNAM.” Of course it is. We just haven’t wasted 57,000 American lives – yet. This is the second war on my watch based on a lie. A war fabricated to make money and to make careers. Including the press. Where is the outrage? O.K., I am a liberal, and proud of it – fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed. Why do conservatives think people who don’t make serious dollars aren’t serious people? Why do we let the right wing claim patriotism and religion for themselves? Liberals need to take pride for building the safety nets. We created Social Security so Grandma would have money to live on – and believe me, she paid in every dime! We got the kids out of sweatshops. We should be puffing out our chests and finding converts by the score. It’s as obvious to me as balls on a tall dog. Personally, I like Americans. I think we are quite nice. We’re the people who get spray tans and buy striped 24 RED HOT PATRIOT toothpaste! Seventy-seven percent of us believe that Alexis de Tocqueville never should have divorced Blake Carrington! We think the last words of “The Star Spangled Banner” are “Play ball!” Huge numbers of us believe in flying saucers, horoscopes and pyramid power. A nation undeterred by reality – no wonder we went to the moon! And to Iraq. So how do liberals cope? Like everyone else – we party. Especially on the 4th of July. Good Texas liberals have fun by gathering up a mess of beer, guitars, dogs and good folk.

(MOLLY takes a six pack of beer from a desk drawer. She sits down like a picnic.) We plonk ourselves somewhere outdoors, where we get sunburned and bitten by mosquitoes, chiggers, and all four kinds of poisonous snakes found in North America. This fits into the great rule of Texas liberalism: No matter what happens, it needs to make a good story for the campfire.

(MOLLY pulls the tab on a can of beer and holds it aloft.) Happy Fourth, beloveds! (SOUND of fireworks) (visual of fireworks)

(MOLLY looks at the beer can.) Alcohol may lead nowhere, but it sure is the scenic route. It let shy little Molly become a whirling dervish of fun. It steals from you, though. I have let dinners burn up from drinking. I’ve made a fool of myself calling friends and babbling in the middle of the night. And I’ve wasted so much time hating myself for it the next day. My friends started hating it, too. They got tired of The Molly Show – the drunk version. So there was a little intervention. Telling me they didn’t love me drunk was about as tough an assignment as a friend can have. I thought I needed alcohol to write funny.

(MOLLY gathers up beer cans and puts RED HOT PATRIOT 25 them on the desk.) But in any condition I could always recite the Declaration of Independence. By heart. I think it’s high time we changed our national symbol from the eagle to a red, white and blue condom. A condom allows for inflation, it halts production, it destroys the next generation, and it protects a bunch of pricks. Plus it gives you a sense of security while you are actually being screwed. (Bells ring. 10 times.)

(MOLLY looks offstage. No HELPER. She looks at the teletype machine. It stops ringing. She approaches it tentatively. She slowly tears off the wire copy and reads.) Apparently, he…couldn’t stand the thought of getting sicker and not being in charge. He didn’t want to face the pain. Yeah, well, who does…

(MOLLY laughs, a bitter but admiring laugh.) You gotta hand it to the old bastard. The last round, and he won again.

(MOLLY looks at the typewriter.) He’s supposed to read this column tomorrow morning and learn that I forgive him for... I began this column at 8:20 this morning. Here’s how it ends. (types) “Am I supposed to tell you that he was a great father and a loving human being? He wasn’t. He blew his brains out, and I…”

(MOLLY breaks down. Visual of her column, which shows the last line: “…as his child who most bitterly disagreed with him, I tell you that this was a man.”) (pause) (Bells ring. 10 times.)

(MOLLY looks at the teletype machine, as if afraid of it.)

(The HELPER enters. He brings MOLLY a cup of coffee.) 26 RED HOT PATRIOT MOLLY. Thank you.

(The HELPER walks to the teletype, reads copy, tears it, puts it on

Molly’s desk and exits as he entered. MOLLY does not read the copy. She sips coffee.) Just the way I like it. (Visual of Molly in a newsroom appears and turns into a negative. Molly feels the image coming up behind her.) It appears I have not been paying attention. If I had, maybe I could have skipped being cut up and poisoned three times. I’d like to use the excuse that I have been too busy manning the fort. Truth is, I just didn’t take care of it. When I got the damn mammogram it turned out I also got the damn disease. Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. (visual image of Molly fades.) Didja know most insurance policies only cover one breast? That’s right – this one’s an orphan! They only pay to cut off one! I’m fightin’ that. First they mutilate you, then they poison you, then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that. I’m one of those people out of touch with my emotions. I treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives – a long-distance call once or twice a year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay. My friend Mercedes was with me right before I had a breast cut off. “You need to deal with this. You need to cry.” So I did. And my emotions were awful. On the bright side, I have figured how to get bubbas to join the breast cancer fight. Tell ’em: “Men, we have a serious problem today. We are losing tits.” RED HOT PATRIOT 27 I am sorry to say that cancer can kill you, but it does not make you a better person. I was in great hopes that confronting my own mortality would make me deeper, more thoughtful. Many lovely people sent me books on how to find spiritual meaning in life. My response was, “I can’t go on a spiritual journey – I’m constipated. Help, I’m "flunking cancer!” (visual of Molly pulling off a wig, revealing her bald head) I did laugh a lot. When I got my first hair back, it came in right next to my mouth – that nice little mustache I’ve always hated. That God – what a sense of humor. See, I am an optimist to the point of idiocy.

(SOUND: a dog barking, far off. MOLLY runs towards sound, to the back of the stage.) What the hell? (SOUND: Dog barking. Slight bit closer.) …Shit?

(MOLLY stands and looks around. DOG BARKING off stage right. MOLLY runs toward the sound.) Shee-yit! Where are ya’, girl? That’s my old dog! (as it hits her) Shit. (Lights change.)

(HELPER enters and pushes the desk offstage. The A.P. machine glides offstage at the same time. MOLLY watches them go. HELPER faces off with MOLLY, who is holding the back of her chair. HELPER takes the chair from MOLLY and exits with it.) Well, cowboys and girls…Uhm… Heck fire. (SOUND: Ding, followed by surreal crystal tone)

(MOLLY watches the HELPER move her desk and typewriter to join the pile of desks in the back.) (SOUND: Guitar strumming.) (Lights dim.) You know where I’d like to be right now? In a canoe goin’ down the North San Gabriel River. On the water, 28 RED HOT PATRIOT counting stars around the campfire… O.K. beloveds. Not much time left. Once ’pon a time, we had a newspaper editor in Waco named William Brann who hated three things: cant, hypocrisy and the Baptists. He said, “The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough.” Brann left us when he was shot in the back by an irate Baptist. As he lay dying on the sidewalk, he drew his own gun and shot his murderer to kingdom come. Well, that’s one way to get outta town. But I need more than that. I need a trumpet call here. I need people in the streets, banging pots and pans. Do not throw away our legacy out of cynicism or boredom or neglect. You have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who have ever lived on this planet. You can not only vote, you can register other voters, put up signs, march! All your life, no matter what else you do, you have another job. You are a citizen. Beloveds, politics today stinks, it is rotten. These are some bad, ugly and angry times, and I am so freaked out. What happened to the nation that never tortured? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? Hate has stolen the conversation. The poor are now voting against themselves. Politics isn’t about left and right; it’s about up and down. The few are screwing the many. Not that hard to figure out how to fix things. Stop letting big money buy our elections. Here’s the score now: Every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch in office spends half his time whoring after special interest money. If folks got elected by ordinary citizens again, they’d have nobody to dance with but us, the people. That’d bring me hope. You know what else brings me hope? The kids who camp out on my couch when they come to town. RED HOT PATRIOT 29 Singin’, organizin’, agitatin’. They keep me from being alone. They are my monuments. Every time some kid who’s called a wetback, a towelhead, a fag or a plain old hell-raiser lifts up her head and dares to fight the hatred, I’ll have my monument. I’m claiming all future freedom fighters as my kin. Freedom and justice beats having my name in marble any day. Celebrate the sheer joy of a good fight. …Boy, I sound like The General, don’t I? Well. It’s my last column. I’m allowed. I know what people are gonna ask when I’m gone. They’re gonna ask, “What would Molly say?” I said plenty. I shouted out loud for 40 years. I led my own troops, Dad. “What would Molly say?” Well, hell. What do you say. (blackout) End of Play