hiding back there. i am here to tell you were perhaps some of you have read this story about this book the statesman and that might be what drew you here. i would say that you were drawn

here perhaps why that riding. brad is a wonderful writer. please support newspapers and my extension by reading newspapers whether on-line -- [applause] an example of a journalist at a daily main street paper can be politic. i am not become biased because he wrote such a lovely story but look for his byline and read that newspaper. schleck gophers? >> yeah. >> okay. i'm guessing i could look around the room i know there are many with fom's pure, friends of moly, and have come again after yodeling about this book at other places but i was just in her dallas over the weekend and speaking about this book and for north dallas it was sort of

somewhere near canada we were so far north. [laughter] and i just, you know when you're speaking in public sometimes you wonder why you should say especially -- i feel liberated here and maybe will say some things i wouldn't say in who dallas. [laughter] where which meet those that live in dallas. i've lived in dallas as the introduce are noted but there is a difference. mali was very perceptive and her opinions about the city's so i feel like we are on safe turf. i will start the way i started in dallas come here is molly, and representing the people walking by think this is a new molly ivins book and the name as small as maybe it should be and the publisher thought maybe somebody will think this is a work buy molly. i was telling a friend it was humbling. we talked about this, it was very humbling to work on a book

about molly in fact i was telling a friend i was actually depressed working on a book about molly, personally deeply depressed maybe not so much about the difficult circumstances that we've wondered with in molly's life but the fact i realized when we were looking at her that i myself could never have as many friends as molly ivins. she had friends everywhere said it was humbling and somewhat depressing. realizing how popular she was and when we begin looking at her life, molly was a pack rat and i think left a transparent legacy available for people who wanted to know more about her who loved her and i admired her and when you look at her archives our store for the wonderful center for american history at the university of texas you see literally thousands of letters that she kept from readers perhaps some of you over the

years and they simply say they began almost universally der molly, and then people apologize in the second sentence and say forgive me the presumption of familiarity. i feel like i know you like you are my friend and i could use the one word description, molly with an exclamation. there's 100,000 watts smile that it was very open and embracing and welcoming. what you see in her papers we saw this repeatedly that people wrote to molly from small towns all across the nation reaching out to molly as if she were a lifeline, political lifeline, role model lifeline if you will. there was a letter from a small town in oregon, oceanside, which i happen to know a bit about. my mother-in-law lives there so i know how tiny it is.

no self phone service gratefully. but someone wrote a letter from there to molly saying i feel alone except for when i read you. i feel i can think of the faults progressively about politics, things the need to be changed and you are my medium and lifetime and there's thousands of letters like that. it is positively inspiring and humbling. she had a true extended family i would say. of course i told somebody i was depressed about all this and i said with sympathy you are not as funny as molly or as talented, linker combat of about half an hour. enough about that. but molly wasn't always molly. she was married when she was born and some of her good friends i see here knew that.

a lot of folks knew that she was born mary increment to molly. it was a nickname at the early age the mole because she left to burrow in her room in houston and in river oaks where she grew up, those of you from texas know what that might symbolize. she grew up with george w. bush. and i will get to that in a second. but molly was mary first and she'd broken her room and her gracious france -- i keep pointing over here because i see two of them that have been to her house note that she had close to 4,000 volumes in her book collection. they ran from the romances that she loved to the 800 books of what winston churchill could each of them equally red wolf of

the dog eared notes written. not at an early age molly was a gracious reader eight romilly curious, the great trait of a great journalist, just a closet in the right sense of the term. just open to new ideas and sets of experiences, and even before she was a teenager she was a wise guy teenager. [laughter] but she would be in her room and read and her brother and notably father began calling her the mole and it kind of transmogrified into molly. so if you were curious how it came to be that way that's in part where it came from. but her dad was quite an interesting man. we had difficulty in trying to reach a sensitive balance and describing, not to sound too pious or sanctimonious but it was difficult because her dad was a very autocratic -- described and frankly as molly wrote about him in her notes

there are 150 bankers boxes for you to look at if you wish at the center for american history you can buy bankers boxes three or 4 feet long, the kind with drawstrings and dead storage of important papers, and they are filled with molly's life. >> every single one she ever had. >> every single item she kept from a conscious age she put in retain. i found it fascinating mall we kept everything from her grade school report cards, pay stubs, letters home from camp mystic. who of you have been there or knows it? a famous camp out of the texas hill country where lbj would send his kids.

mali went there at the age of ten and 11 writing opinionative letters and she wouldn't agree with camp counselors. she was developing at a very early age with the the reason i bring it up as her life is really in those boxes. it was easy to begin falling her art if you will how she developed and her own opinions. we made a very conscious decision if i can say so speaking on behalf of mike to try to anchor the book with molly's own words. we decided to briskly not to incur the book with her columns because you already own clothes, her books were best sellers and you for her work so we presume familiarity and frankly why replicate them but we wanted to fill the book with molly's voice

about her own circumstance and evolution will and this is about her evolution how she got to be fought one word person from molly! we could argue until the cows come home in texas i think the most important journalist who emerges from texas and one of the most influential journalists in american history. somebody blew open the doors not just for women in journalism and she certainly did that but for a way of thinking about journalism and importing critical thinking into journalism. it's all there. starts at the age of time. an amazing process and she was kind enough and a retrospective way frankly bittersweet and poignant way she was private and

compartmentalized some of her friends told us and they kept all these things for a reason that she wanted you to see and we happen to be to people that went to see it perhaps initially but that materials there and she wanted to compartmentalize parts of her life to be known later. she learned a lot about her dad. she called him general jim, he was very autocratic. he scared the holy hell out of her friends. he was at one point the president of tenneco, one of the most powerful big oeo companies on planet earth in the history of the energy sector. he was president of tenneco. again, some of you know that, some don't and when you consider molly's politics progressive, liberal, left-leaning, who knows what they would call her today, she would be a communist i think and she would like that. barack obama been called

socialist or worse. so she loved that. but to understand molly and her evolution you've got to start with her dad. that's the starting point. molly began -- i wonder my daughter is here tonight and i wonder if she will be molly ivins because she will be resisting me through a process -- welches already resisting but i won't know if it will have full realization as a columnist bud molly began resisting her father of a personal level. he was a lawyer and jury goodlatte arguing and guess what, so is molly. she was the best hardware in the house probably better than he was. she was one of three children, middle child she had an older sister and younger brother and she was the one who raised her hand in the war with conservative politics. we discovered, and this is raw material of having a raw image or letters from her father when

he was in the military during world war ii where he is using frankly all of language about the african-american soldiers that he's serving with. so there is side posts early on that molly was wrestling with some things around her house. she kept these letters by the way. she kept the letters her father. rather raw bits of racism. that is where it started. molly began pushing back and i think initially it was to be heard in this autocratic household and she became a thinking and reading person, the mole in her room, it elevated to a matter of discussing politics and arguing, not kidding around it's just there. it's evident in her letters and papers the diaries she kept at the age of 12 and 13 and 14 she was having political arguments with the president of tenneco

and he was uncomfortable because sometimes she outdid him and was making fun of him even though he didn't know she was making fun of him which was hurt art perhaps sometimes even later in life she had a magical ability to needle you without even realizing you were being needled. so that's where it began. she, you know i was talking to somebody today about the fact if you get attracted to the things hidden from view of course we can't get that thing and it becomes more alluring and outsized and that happened to molly. she knew that her father had cordoned off this family. they grew up in river oaks down the block from george w. bush. she went to st. john's which is one of the finest private schools in america. george w. bush wanted to go to st. john's but they wouldn't let him and so he went to kincaid which isn't a bad school, another very prominent powerful

school but they were in the same orbit. just down the block from each other in the river oaks area and they mingled with the country clubs and they were in the nexus of the high energy and political world in texas. senator john tower drop by the house. just the kind of environment, she grow extremely conservative and began resisting -- back on track should begin looking at things i think she felt were seditious, something the was going to bug the crap out of her father, and she began reading a little publication that a friend of hers had in her house that clearly was not welcome at the speed delete the ivins house also would was called the texas observer, 32nd sales pitch, if you believe molly ivins and fierce journalism by a copy of

it, subscribe, go on line, told them you love them. the observers defined by many ways molly's sensibility or ethos or her view of morality of journalism. issued began hanging out with a friend it was kind of curious he was described in new york intellectual >> new york dr. intellectual. >> he was a new york intellectual jew would and he had hung out with musicians. she began hanging out with a friend -- musicians and poets. a little bit of the orbit for molly's usual crowd. but she found a soul mate in school and began hanging out with who would become her lifelong friend said she was influenced. she found this publication,

literally that is how it happened she charmed the texas observer and it was a secret pleasure. it had things she wasn't used to reinsuring at st. john's, i used to work at the chronicle so i know about that, but she dustin because she felt it had been excluded. it was a treasure and she immersed herself in the study did and to cut pleasure as a teenager something her parents would scream of. so she went deep in that direction and was also influenced and st. john's by the way by an english professor who was on believably seditious. if they knew what he was doing at school they wouldn't have had him at school they would have sent him down to some barrier on land in louisiana and cordoned him off. he believed shockingly in the right to free speech and supported kennedy and the

presidential election. my god, he can quote from robert mufasa and he believed in voting rights and community food drives that might seem kind of nutty in context in houston texas in the late 50's and early 60's. that was in her orbit revolutionary. she was influenced by the teacher at st. john's getting away with this kind of shaping of the young minds and then reading the texas observer and she was off to the races. she was still on a prescribed path for a while on her way to a very prominent school of higher education. her mother had gone to smith and her grandmother had gone to smith as well. i guess that is where molly was going to go and she was going not to pursue the same things of gloria steinem, she was going to

go to get a little shy and be burnished the social level. i think her father, speculating now, maybe saw her involved in somewhere with the arts but not any incendiary level. maybe she would be an educator but not anything that touched on anything remotely political or truly sociocultural. she washed ashore after a little hiatus one at scripps. she didn't like scrips a whole lot, right? mabey i will read that little portion. it's kind of a funny thing. i will just read you a little bit about molly going off out into the world. when negative molly began leaving texas, she found people in your monthly fascinated with

texas. lbj was on the radar of course, something awful had happened in texas and dallas in 1963 and molly as she went around -- i know many of you have experienced this. i still do to this day people ask what the hell is going on donner? what is it about the former country called texas that still behaves like a rogue nation, and molly found herself at a very young age trying to explain us. and i think she -- because she was predisposed to laugh all the time and half on the right up to the day she died she tried to have a little fun even about all of things in texas. she told people always when she went to college at scripps and smith and she was from east texas. geographically we can argue about that. the cows come home in texas.

i think you here in texas know what they really means, right? what she liked saying because here's why. this is what she would say. over three years that she had grown up in east texas. i grew up in east texas to when i played basketball all over east texas. we used to play in a town called bid. it was a big joke, copley in bed. the texas woman of the meanest on the face of the earth. used to play on the small towns. but guards were invariably named after flowers. there would be willing, rose and fi let. ruby, parole or opel. but it was east texas everybody had to names like robie joe or parole and and they always wore pink curlers in their hair so they would look good afterwards.

the meanest man i ever met so i looked hard. does anybody know where bed, texas texas? molly was having fun. i actually linker and with that when we were doing our fact checking. but she was developing a voice when she went off to college because people would asked her on a serious breach what happened in texas with president kennedy and who was lyndon baines johnson, dominating new defense as molly was out in the world and people really did want to have heard explain so she began trying to describe the place she'd grown up and travel a little bit and she would tell stories about creatures she heard on the radio when she would be on trips with her data across texas, and she went to scripps for one year and then transferred back to the east coast. they were entranced.

it was the beginning of the storyteller, and the molly having a little fun with texas in the texas lithology she learned people were at the edge of their chairs and there shall were dropping. they were playing with plastic curlers in their hair during the game? and then you heard these preachers on the radio saying fish send your money to the station in houston, texas and people were doing it and on and on and on. it seemed like an exotic world. she implied, had a loaf on with it. did she do it in a mean-spirited way? i don't think ever. right through her taking on both bill clinton and george w. bush to task i would argue right now, wrestle with you molly never did it with him. her humor is different. it wasn't of the caliber because

that suggests an elevation in some sense but it wasn't like what you hear on some of our cable news shows. molly didn't do that. she didn't stoop to conquer. she didn't do it. she was quite opinionated. [laughter] but she didn't do it to hurt you we. she wanted to knock you off of her high horse which she did repeatedly but she would like to say that she was from east texas and especially at smith and the reason i want to link above for a quick second and smith is where molly in some sense became radicalized without her overtly using the 10-dollar word. she got they're a time that he was coming back to the campus to talk about the feminine mystique and gloria steinem was making a name for herself as an independent journalist who could

address women's rights and women's issues in america and a way that hadn't been done before. molly had the distinction at smith of coming to hear that the of the watershed almost revolutionary work and she was one of only half a dozen people showed up. so she had a predisposition to want to be informed and be an open vessel. she was always in pursuit of the things she felt had been hidden from her. she felt her father and family and fate and circumstance in texas that shielded her from her. sometimes deliberately so she began in a sense on this journey of marvelous one self education that was on yielding over the journalism school teaching a mantra you shouldn't be in this business unless you were

internally curious. molly was the embodiment of that. she was the biggest sponge in the world. i mean that in a good sense. she wanted to live life to the maximum and absorber and learn and learn. we are supposed to say journalism is about to being in school first of your life. that causes people to leave my class. i'm spending life with people like you. molly's philosophy is i'm here to keep learning and she loved being around people observing their stories and it could be the king of siam or the radio guy. she felt them to be equal value in terms of feeding her head and soul. she loved it. but molly -- internet me. i need a good editor. interrupt me. molly, threw into smith is still

rare find about a world that children are privileged, very wealthy people, powerful people. she was in school with the daughters of the most powerful people on earth. doesn't feel safe saying that. she was engaged to be married to a young man and this is some of the things he found interesting because we hadn't known about them, many of her very good friends. one of molly's good friends who was a very courageous figure in the texas journalism tonight told me she for us frankly staggered to learn that molly had the depth of relationship she had with this young man. molly was engaged to be married to jail why don't know we could have ever adequately described in frankly one of the most material and unusual psychedelic people i have encountered as we

have researched about and learned through the prism of molly's own words. he was an extremely affluent hao yale and hisssisnt secretary of state at the eisenhower administration but he was also a cia spy. so consider that given her politics as you know what she was once engaged to a young man who's father was a covert diplomat at the cia operative. it boggles my mind because i know that molly knew that. what we are talking about here is a process of transformation and i will explain why i think it is relevant in her life. this guy was off the charts. maybe i could just read you a smattering. this is such a radical transformation moment in molly's

life, this relationship. his name was hank at yale he was a deejay, studied hipness to some, had a prize to repair it he brought back from south america and it taught to sing opera and a role in an italian motorcycle, reminded people he was a near death blue baby born when the volcano erupted in mexico so that he was planning to do advanced studies in journal germany to beat the people of the court and become an atheist. this is her fiance. he was wired with news coverage reading from one topic to another, kafta needed in a way that left people either breathless or annoyed. he devoured books and ideas and latched onto philosophies and

a cell, i heard that we over the journalism school sometimes used a bad choice of words as my daughter recalled the wtf. does anybody know what the fudge. not to me was a wtf and molly's life. i hope molly is laughing right now. in heaven. the thought that somebody would say hawley, excuse me, molly was going to be engaged to dick cheney. well, maybe the world would've been different. maybe molly would've exercised some behavior modification. and i don't mean in the way that dick cheney did by the way to get political.

i try to keep the narrative on track. the man whom she was engaged to be married to -- let me just read one last thing. she was engaged. they were going to be married. frenzy literally grew up with molly stick with it to the different phases of her life. sometimes you'd molly to the prism of her relationship with her fiancé, given her political inclinations or constitution of the most difficult to imagine that tank collins was the most important person in her life. their relationship was so far removed from those forgotten ditches in houston i want buffalo bayou where the mosquito larva made the fetid water shake far from the shotgun shacks on the edge of her broke i'm aware she had grown up. and for the shotgun shacks illini might have just given up far from the putrid smell and cranking up of the refineries that paid for her own college

education. given molly's final evolution, it would be difficult, very difficult for france to think that she was once willing to entertain thoughts that went far beyond ayn rand, scientific atheism and even rugged individualism. this is from her fiancé is sister. hank holland and molly deconstructed thing so they could reconstruct them on a higher level. that was the kind of thinking that he and mary, as she called molly still then, shared at the time. and check this out, this is just mind-boggling to me. i think i.t. and molly once talked about a master race. again, i mama staggered as a biographer here to learn that. i wrestled with that for a very long time and study and probably more than any other person in her life to determine whether what was true. the dramatic thunderclap is that he died in a wickedly violent

motorcycle accident just outside the grounds of the warehouser lumber magnate fortune, where the lumber magnates were headquartered in washington. molly was living above the cloud line, just hanging out with friends who were extraordinarily wealthy, the most powerful lumber family in america. her boyfriend was out there and she was going to go join them. and he drove his ducati, his motorcycle, italian imported motorcycle basically into a guard rail and died instantly. she went to his wedding dressed as a -- excuse me, forgive me. she went to his funeral dressed as a widow, dressed in black and avail. and her life was irrevocably changed. we maintain this as our psychology, you might call a psycho that that event had to

happen for molly to be liberated in a sense to go on and become molly ivins, champion of a progressive political causes, a social justice warrior. and, you know, you may judge us when he read and save sheet that's a literary device and some sort of terms used to explain this thing and get even very literal. i write in the book back as his ashes were dispensed into the long island sound and by his family it was as if all that was holding molly down in these expectations to join above the cloud line that gilded world that her father and mother and they too were blowing away like the ashes. and molly was irrevocably changed. she on-campus tied smith began drinking a little more than she

out, hanging out of it later, smoking cigarettes, and a great wonderful bits, wonderful stereotype of wearing a trenchcoat, puffing on a stretch cigarette. i want to be a writer, i want to be a journalist and i'm just going to write she said to her friend. it's very big for us in terms of our exposition. that was a thunderclap moment. it helps we think to understand her a little bit better. >> one of her friends at the time said that everyone in the group of the guy who died had a feeling that if the wealth and power that they came from couldn't protect them, this young guy from dying, then what's good, what use was it. the kind of all pulled away from living the life of wealth and power and that was one reason why she started rolling away from the society and the wealth

that she came from. >> yeah, it was such a strange -- given again, the molly that we know and that you might admire and just an unbelievable transformation. she had this sort of nietzsche and view mixed with some ayn rand super individualism. she was such an open person and about social justice and civil liberties that it seems like a disconnect almost. but we feel that he had to pass away almost in this explosive way, frankly, to moveon. so, you know, molly and her dad did know what he was doing. he got her a job at the houston chronicle. now that was a bad thing for many reasons because molly was now hanging around with scruffy types and i feel i'm teratoma talking about that. because you look at us.

so we know now and it worked at the history chronicle with some of the people that worked with. they were still there when i got there. but she began hanging out with the folks who are somewhere north of skepticism and just a tiny bit, tiny bit south of cynicism. and they were damon runyon folks and women who like to hang out late at night. they like to enjoy a cool beverage and smoke cigarettes and gab. and frankly after work, talk about the stories that they couldn't get into the houston chronicle. [laughter] that the editors wouldn't let them in because the stories they knew were actually about the editors. so, they have the goods. molly had the goods at an early age and developed this really great skepticism. talk about a world -- you might've heard the term women's pages. does that still bring about for anyone? back in the day in the 50's and 60's still frankly into the 70's and well, in some places that i

can think of maybe today still. editors less enlightened editors and extraordinarily objectified women in journalism as they needed to be exiled to the women's pages. and that was usually in the back of the paper and it was the last newsies death and it was the fluffy stuff. and it was the. i'm just saying that women were not allowed to do hard subsidy of or frankly offer opinion. good lord, why would that be allowed. say you would find women on the opinion page, the editorial page. so molly entered a journalism for frankly really is a summer gig. your father wanted her to do something he thought it would be innocuous. and little did he know idea than drudge even deeper into the seditious world. but now in the practical application she was hanging out with people and try to, you know, break the news and

describe the news hopefully they correct matter, bring it back. she just loved it. she loved the early pearl economy give-and-take, the stuff that i don't know how it occurs as much as i used to in terms of digital age. but that then, you know, there was just, you know, newspaper folks hung out together in a stay that way tonight a ball, had a blast. as i got in the line of work and probably look the way that i do. but she just jumped into it and they were characters, really wild interesting and funny people at the chronicle. very talented folks with beautifully written story, wonderfully reported stories. again a lot of things got spiked. they were not run because they were sacred cows olivers houston as there are now and in every city. she drank the kool-aid and really loved this profession. so she went back for three internship that the houston chronicle. i don't know what your dad was

thinking. general jim had let that fall off the radar and probably shouldn't allow turkey really wanted her to continue with that path. her mom had to cope that should become a society columnist. and not vague am a specific hopes, that molly would be the chronicle or of the society of houston and would send your note saying what anything about, you know, a profile of the new church that's been dealt to river oaks. molly would resist the suggestions of course. so she got into it too fast for a little bit here sleep and hopefully ask questions. she went to the columbia journalism school. i think her father was getting suspicious at that point because that's in new york city. and that's probably hot lead of something -- i went to the same school. i grew up in new york city and i went to columbia so i know this. i was completely dissuaded even

at the school i would then. you don't go to columbia. it's a hotbed of revolution. that made me want to go there even more. molly wanted to go there for these reasons as well. a columbia she became -- she had drilled into her the same thing i had drilled into me, objectivity is king and by objectivity it was a completely fair and balanced story. he said, she said, fair, balanced, one site, the other side. in the earlier you have a dynamic achieved, the better side your story is. and molly in the heralded ivy league school. her father was worried about it but i think is that it's an ib school at least and there shall be -- she'll achieve the finishing and perhaps check it out to her these tendencies and then shall come back to texas. a columbia she began questioning the very things that these graybeards and i'm not knocking.

i love the school. there was a philosophy that object to be that your stories about go to the high holy altar of objectivity and stay there. and if you did otherwise you weren't a journalist. you had an agenda. so, molly began resisted because molly leads a life of resistance. she did like her camp counselors. she didn't like, you know, some of the things in her life and she carried to afford. this is important and i think if you want to understand a revolution. she began presenting this notion of objectivity. and basically if i could boil it down, it might explain it better. knowledge is simply believe that objectivity was who we and she used stronger language. and that sounds sacrilegious. even when i hear it i get a little scared. i think my teachers from columbia are going to come find me, hunt me down. what she believed that you shouldn't give equal story to

people who were alive. that's what she meant by objectivity being who we. there's balance and there's balance. why injectors story, why import into your stories come alive, but the truth, things that don't advance the public searching out i'm a don't advance hannity. they're just there to allow someone to rant and rave. their own agendas and that are a legitimate agendas. so you get into this trap, this circular kind of logic coming up, i've got to be this for my own story. and vector stories and balanced because he given equal weight to things that shouldn't be there and have no merit, intellectual merit, artistic human merit. so at a very young age, this is very ambitious, she began developing what she would call a struggle for subject tbd. it's extremely counterintuitive.

but she began on struggle. and then trying to passport, she got out of school went to the minneapolis star tribune, a mainstream paper were she really struggled. she was almost a schizophrenic existence. this honor out to cover the minnesota state fair, local radio and stories about putting new shingles on your roof. my goodness, molly ivins, what the heck? what are the editors thinking? on the flipside, said viciously she was going to every corner in minnesota to find every radical that existed. a little difficult in minnesota, let's just say at that time. but she found them. in her opinion she found a good hearty progressives and frankly tapped into a deeper vein of socialist, old guard union organizers, people who are affiliated with churches again that were doing somewhat radical work. and on the fly she was making these stories in the paper one by one and becoming more brave,

more bold generics position. so you read her corpus, her body of work from her first newspaper job, her first non-interns often it's like you're seeing two people. the safe molly over here doing this objective story and then this really hair-raising stories where she's by their standards advocating things and interviewing militants and jerry rubin and abbie hoffman and david dillinger who are passing through town. and getting more comfortable. there's another thing that no one knows about molly unless you read our book, okay unless he knew molly and some light, forgive me for framing it that way. but she fell in love again in minneapolis. and this is illustrative of how a few years she made this amazing transformation. the next man in her life was a radical activist. she moved in with them. quite far afield from this man who was at the date to the

filthy lucre of capitalism at a high, high level. molly is now living with a radical activist, someone who is so radical he is charged with various kinds brought to trial, where molly, based on our research and her writings secretly testified on his behalf without letting her employers know. i can't tell you today how that would get you in trouble. i think you get us all in trouble, right? she went to a trial and testified on behalf of her boyfriend, her lover, the person she was living with the issue is basically accused of some radical activity. she began going door to door within as an employee of the newspaper doing community organizing for grants, just to spice up a little bit she began writing forward the militants, which was the house organ for the socialist party in america. i just would be beheaded if i tried to do any of this in my more recent years in the newspaper. it just wouldn't -- so she was

great brave, quite brave. you may judge or anybody like. i'm just telling you what she did. she had a very combustible interesting and intense relationship with this man. the minnesota police department hated molly to such enormous degree. and frankly, in part because she testified on behalf of her boyfriend and was able to free him. he had been accused of causing a big rockets. that was a good thing. and of course, she was hanging around the courthouse in one day when her boyfriend was about to go on trial and she heard a police officer they are. her story is that she heard a police officer they are talking about a codefendant of her boyfriend who was an african-american activist in town. and she heard the police say that we're really happy to get these and people, the people.

and molly conveyed that to her boyfriend. he said holy guacamole, let's get you on the witness stand to testify some of the prejudicial perhaps behavior in this police department that's basically trying to put me in jail. and she did. and so the police department didn't like molly. and they named the police department spotted pig, literally a pig and they named it molly in honor of molly ivins. and they denied forever till the pigs come home in minnesota that it was just quite a coincidence, that the minneapolis police department had a pig named molly. it was a little bit of their wiseguy retribution i guess. molly left there because she couldn't stand being stifled by the paper. she felt she was dying on the high altar of objectivity. so what did molly ivins do?

she called collect to the paper one day when she was out of town and resigned. so she had called and collect and said will you accept the charges were molly ivins? yes. i'm quitting, boss. so they paid for it and then some. there's an example of this. and then, my goodness, the courage to do this. she decided on her way out of town after she resigns collect to read a story in the "austin chronicle," if you will, of minneapolis. then i call, forgive me, the mother of all f u letters. forgive me, i'm sorry. but that's what it was. she wrote several thousand word article in which she not only burned the bridge dweller paper skirmish you through several gametes over her shoulder and basically besmirched everything the paper said as she set up a

stodgy, lame, and doing the public a disservice and dime in his altar of objectivity. and they were printing lines and mysteries. shag us felt pretty confident that she needed that letter of recommendation from the guy. by the way, when she called calexico the guy who had hired her. you know, so, she was reared as i would like to say. she got back to texas as quick as she could and she went to work for "the texas observer," which he had idealized and left at an early age and that's the molly you guys know. the molly in 1970, when she was in texas, at least in terms of the things that she wrote and the way she wrote, i challenge you. go find no difference between her work toward the end of her life in 2007 and 1970. her very good friends, kaye northcutt, and the woman she joined as "the texas observer" said that molly came to texas,

well, she came to her job interview with a six-pack of beer. so, as that continues. she showed up with a six-pack of beer, got the job, which says something about her of the people who hired her. it was all good read kaye northcutt said maleeva fully realize that she was writing and thinking of just the same way that she did decades later in 2007. she had a voice, and on to become a sense of humor, and an ability to chat on the spirit of will rogers and samuel clements, h. l. rankin, and frankly that's not just my description. far more people more irritated than us, forgive me have said that about her. so she came fully realized as an individual. she came to the devil's playground with a lot of low-hanging fruit. she was in the orchard that keeps on giving. it's really not far away from

here. it's a big granite building that you've seen. holy cow, she had gone to heaven. you know, it was the atm machine that was broken. just -- and she had a lot of fun there. you know, you know, you've read this now and we left this out of our back, but, you know, she just loved being mayor and writing about things. as she and the observer prepared for the opening round of the 1970 wednesday legislature, she pushed open the opposing doors that led to the impressive wood pedal second-floor chambers. there were two good old voice. she perked up when she overheard one say to the other. you should've seen what i found myself last night. and she don't talk neither.

okay, yeah. molly had endured three years of emphasized objectivity up in minnesota and she got some exposure to quote serious political reporting as practiced by the veteran new york and "washington journal" she studied with at columbia. but now that essex observer she had free reign not just to address issues that barely dented the pages of mainstream papers, the outside issues of poverty, racism, system the corruption, what to do with the confiding, in other words confiding into you are rich enough to sit back and forth between a mocking condemnation and he can you believe it and of wonderment. i'm her first piece there was the sense of extension from the rap sessions as she had with reporters in houston or minnesota and even announced in with her friends. it was an invitation to the reader to come behind the curtain and study the cartoon yours, the malapropisms, and bourbon and cash waste glass no stations for political mind us.

excuse my language again. channeling molly, we write things like that. so she had some fun and that's really where molly, i don't know, i'm biased. maybe we all are. that's why we think things about texas. everything is bigger here. so i don't know of molly would've been able to find a lot of this low-hanging fruit in iowa. i'm not a knock in iowa. i've been there, it's a beautiful place. she had a lot to work with here in texas. i got a flash forward because we'd like to entertain questions. she spent six years really developing this voice. and what happened is as people increasingly wanted to understand in texas were mystified by it, couldn't grasp it, and still camped by the way. that they were asking her, "the new york times" particularly

where is asking her please, explain texas to us. we see her work in the observer and it appears that you are in the moment, but you're hovering above it. these cars are really groping and grasping you. you're often the only woman in the room. that's a significant theme in her book. molly was extraordinarily courageous. she was the only woman in the room very, very often at the state capitol. and most particularly, as you know this, in texas the real duplicating way things work anywhere in state capitals is sorted as bob dylan says in the halls of justice, justice is in the halls. i think bob dylan said that. molly knew you could go in the hallway. you can go in the backroom of the state capital. you can go to the wet bar in the state capital and that's really where the state business, your business, our business gets decided. and then it's late night wasted around town, roundest day. and that's not really in the

open chamber. i don't think anything is change. molly tapped into that, that means them. she went reinventing herself as the only woman in the room. and what she had to do, i think regrettably ultimately, after she began drinking a lot, because these guys, men, were hard drinking some of the guns. these are guys who carried them, drove, bob bullock was a former governor, george bush's political mentor before karl rove. i maintained this in a book i wrote about bush that bush wouldn't be president if not for bob bullock. she had to hang out with these men and the underground. and by the way, she could drink all of them under the table, stay up later, and boy were they surprised him a letter columns and said my god, did i say that? molly would go into the women's room, and write down what they

were saying. and man were they surprised. some of them were a little daffy. they would thank her for selling their names right. they didn't really realize what she was seen as a reflection on them. molly was sought out for news about texas and she went to "the new york times" in 1976. and as a teenager, she had written on a little piece of paper once, i want to become famous by the time i'm 25 or i will commit suicide. and she put it in her wallet and carried it with her through life. and molly wanted -- she wanted to be well known. i don't think she wanted to be a celebrity and the way she became a legal grasping, climb, and climbing on her. she went to be famous in "the new york times" spoke to that. she thought she could do the same things in new york but for a national audience. "the new york times" shutter down. they took every colorful word,

all the innuendos and stripped it out of her copy. the real patter. when she tried to write that some blowhard bloviating fat cats in albany, new york, where the state art had a trendline. they would change it to protuberant abdomen. ali said my god, what is going on. there were moments when she was sent to a corel is in mexico to read a story on behalf of "the new york times" about, there is no other way to describe it, a chicken killing festival. people would gather around and kill a lot of chicken, roast them up, eat them, like feathers, and talk about chickens. we have festivals like this in texas. i'm surprised that wasn't in texas. we had the fire and marshall and texas. to do a slice of life stories you couldn't help herself. she read a story comes in and back to the editors in new york to describe the vessel as a gang

of pluck. [laughter] that obviously works with you. so it didn't work in new york. they didn't like that. they thought for some reason that molly was suggesting something else. i don't know what happened. and she got a phone call and for those of you who are insider baseball junkies, abe rosenthal, one of the titans of american journalism is usually editor of "the new york times," the palencia paper record and he was -- this was brought to its attention. there is a disturbance in the shyer, you know, to make a reference to the word of the rings. the great eye of sauron. they come to new york, molly ivins, and she knew she was coming for a dressing down quite deliberately she shows up and "the new york times" office she shows up -- she showed up in new york wearing a dress that when friend saw her landing in new

york had all these blotches on it. molly, abe rosenthal is the editor of "the new york times." he sets the agenda for everything on television, print media. what are you going to do? he's going to yell at you. what are those blotches? blood. what kind of blood? chicken blood from the chicken killing festival. she was going to make a little statement. her friends prevailed at her. he yelled at her and said that she was trying to import early thoughts into "the new york times" and she replied the quote was that, gosh darn i knew i couldn't fool you, mr. rosenthal. and she left "the new york times" right after that good if it wasn't for her protuberant abdomen and beer bellies she left and took her dog and i guess i can't say it. her dog is well, the dog's name

was the s word. so we know what that means. it was a four letter word beginning with alice. so she delighted in knots. she brought this back to new york and i didn't go over well with "the new york times" newsroom because she would yell out hey at the same the full name. to mix it up she would walk down the street and do that too. in new york that didn't faze anyone because everybody calls each other that anyways. sometimes she would say hey spinner. so there were a lot of things. she laughed too hard. she smoked too much, drink too much, had too much fun for "the new york times." that was an oil and water mix. she came back to texas, "the dallas times herald" and the late great paper that was a little more liberal in the place where i work that, the "dallas morning news" and we were locked in war. i was there at the time ali was there in dallas. she came back and was given a very, very, very long leash.

and guess what? they begin regretting that long leash almost instantly because molly didn't like dallas a whole lot. she liked a lot of the people there. she loved a lot of the people there, but there was something about dallas as you might imagine that just didn't work for her. she just -- and she couldn't help herself. she began to meet ken the nose of the bear. she began to yell about the city. a moment in our book were molly is walking down a -- there a many moments in our book but one particularly in dallas. there's many moments in our book were molly holds off and toxic guy in the jaw. and for very good reason. you know, she knocks him out, she knocked one guy out so that when he spun around he landed in a cactus patch out in the hill country. that's perfect for narrative

purposes. he was basically stalking her. she was walking downtown dallas one day at pacific and person i think is where this was coming near a bar that sometimes i would go to called bell's green glass. she had a couple of cool beverages with a guy named billy porterfield who was a great figure in texas journalism, a very literate journalist. and she was standing at the corner one day in the mid-80's and this is dallas, alongside over here were several members of the harlem globetrotters who were in town to play game. they'll begin walking across at the change of the light. in dallas to get a ticket if you jaywalk. i think my wife got a ticket once were jaywalking. she is here to testify to that. they began walking across the street. molly felt that someone in this gaggle of men had inappropriately touched her and

pinched her on the bottom. and without, you know, in a nanosecond she turned around for leverage, leaned back, and thought that i, the offending guy and knocked his teeth out, blood when sprain. he fell to his knees. it was the wrong guy. it was billy porterfield. [laughter] but they had a good laugh about that. and molly just loved that. she loved that. and i wanted to just maybe we can wrap up. i don't know. i have that bookmark your mama troubles with men. porterfield slashes missing tooth back to the newspaper it would have made a good story for years to come. he had decided that molly ivins was the greatest are not yet ever known and he knew she really hated dallas. austen is the absence of texas. dallas is nothing more than a

neiman marcus. let's get out of this crazy place. i'm pandering here because we are in dallas. i didn't read that up in dallas. [laughter] but -- but she wanted to come back to boston and the paper, dated her because when you look at again her work is in dallas, she is just making fun of dallas over and over and over and over again. it coincide with the gop coming to town for the republican convention in 1984 and ronald reagan and george, the elder george bush and nancy reagan were showing up as she said wearing cowboy hats with this plumage on it, these ostrich feathers that no true cowboy in texas would be seeing, you know, wearing ever. and molly said these faux cowboys. and she was playing with the image and can approach your own ticket to get out of time.

she wanted to get back to austin and so they accommodated here here it and she came here and that's where some of you may know her personally when she worked here on behalf for several years that mean old alice morning news bought it one day. "the dallas times herald" put it out of business. i think the day after we bought it mollie being one of the stars, one of the true stars of that paper landed on her feet and arrived wonderfully quickly at fort worth stall where she felt comfortable and wrote three columns a week for them. in some of those columns and some other articles she wrote were collected in a book one day, maybe you've heard of it. molly's first book. and it became a runaway bestseller. frankly against all odds, her editor in fact the we talked to for this book said he was knocked down with a feather. because collections of journalism don't sell that well. but what happened in his estimation was that it was a

collection, as you know, of molly's columns and publications. she had a huge bestseller, phenomenal bestseller, and unlikely bestseller, collection of journalism. it usually doesn't happen. a collection of liberal journalism written in this funny way. how the heck did that happen? yet he believes that all those people imagined earlier he wanted a life i have found it with molly mlb is desperate for saves and the persons in little towns he did know the person over here in new york city, they all were molly fans i'm a distance ;-semicolon estimate that put the huge bestseller. and that was the dawn of it. what might very happily called molly inc., perhaps and you know again just to finally conclude that molly -- you might feel the book is disproportionate. we linger more for evolution and not so much her later years, frankly. some of those seemed evident and

other good writers will address that hopefully, some of the more contemporary faces of molly's life he wanted to look at the evolution as a backdrop. i must value first full disclosure there are elements in the book that are quite painful. they are also very raw about molly. she was an alcoholic and a rather -- she had many intense moments. i feel there was a moment, many moments actually where you learned about that she could've died. there is i think a very poignant moment written around words where she's working -- this is when she was still working for "the new york times." she wrestled without all of them for decades. she's sitting in her bathtub, wrestling with her alcoholism. she is reading what seems to me very ironic, the history of "the new york times" and frankly passing out in her bathtub. you know, i do know that we could do justice to a story like

that. it's very awful and bittersweet. but you know a lot of this material that we talk about that we don't linger too in to a certain degree we tried to put in molly's words. we found some portions of her diaries which he donated to a public entity. so i think in some way she wanted this to be known. we quote from some of that in there when we allow her to speak to her condition or evolution. and that is probably what you were probably no she had cancer and endowed three bouts of it, very courageously. and ways she didn't read about the we learned by looking at her archives are talking to her related friends. so that is addressed. and we touch on some other things, the formative figures in her life, her very close relationship with anne richards, two peas in a pod. she learned to be funny and to talk about civil liberties from a man named john henry faulk who was the first man perhaps to really beat back the blacklist,

the mccarthy blacklist and succeed. and then she learned how that crazy building down there worked for bob bullock. he was a german tour to her, dangerous and frankly might have been demonic figure. he did a lot of good work, made the trains moving time. but as a personality he wrestled with some demons himself. and she had to hang out late with him. there's so much evidence in her archives. she said at a later and later and later with this man who drove a car one in six now that we do about motel windows to escape the irate has been of the woman that he was with who fired machine guns off the hill country. just a very intense man. and then adopted george w. bush as his political accolate. she learned from those three people how to address texas and how to develop this personality. and then, you know, very regrettably to flash forward,

you know, molly passed away in january of 2007. i'll just read the last paragraph i suppose. molly died in her better tree-lined home in the last wednesday of january 2007, message boards lit up around the country, impromptu memorial services were held in different cities. flowers were placed outside her home. that day was the anniversary date of congress passing an amendment to the u.s. constitution to abolish slavery. that's how our book concludes. molly's life was a testimony to knocking people off their high horse for good and and for protecting civil liberties which seems to be a word that gets bandied about as if it's a negative. her life was devoted to practicing good journalism in the spirit of protecting your right to know things, to hold people accountable and to

protect us from social injustice. i -- i talk too much. i know i did. but if you have any questions and he still is patience with us, please or if mike wanted to add anything? okay, i'm sorry. >> i was crazy about molly, but i'm most disappointed at her response to allegations of plagiarism. >> right, yeah. >> i wonder if you could either of you comment on that. >> i guess i can. molly is just amazing and she was accused of plagiarism by a humorist, southern humorist. what is its southern humorist? someone who specialized in writing with a regional talent with specificity.

molly essentially owned up to it. yeah, she did come aghast. she apologized, but there are two a-alpha bits here at work. she wrote a letter -- she did write a letter to the author and explained that she felt she defended herself but said she felt a field that i didn't attribute the work to you. and in fact she did. the great party said that she didn't attribute enough to me. she didn't give enough to me and she might've been right. i don't know. you'll have to actually look. you can judge for yourself. molly wrote her a letter, but it was an apology letter. this is in our book and she says i'm sorry you do when i take this seriously. and if i let some attribution that i thought i'd been clear, but you know, i'm barely not clear enough. and then she answered her letter as saying by the way, you are quite a aren't you.

[laughter] i think the way that molly was saying it. she just couldn't help herself. she wanted to be funny. and in that effectiveness is funny. i guess i would hope the humorist found some humor in it. here's something mind blowing that's mike knows a lot about, that molly is very well attended memorial service here. i daresay probably one of the most, best attended memorial services in the history of austen. a big crowd they. they've done you great disservice by not reading not molly's one-liners because that would give far more laughs. but at the service, correct me if i'm wrong, someone began reading some of molly's work. and as he described it to me, because mike was in attendance, that you felt your heart begin to stop, had a chill come over

you. >> they read line by line all of the lines that molly had not attributed. >> and you had a bad feeling about this. you thought it was a horrible mistake. >> yeah. >> but dashed >> well, it was almost like molly was laughing from the grave. it was almost like she was plainly practical joke. >> we can tend to believe that molly wanted that to happen. my final joke on you. go ahead and read that alleged plagiarism. read it at my funeral. i don't care. so i think that's how we read it and we are believing it that she had one more final coming of the nose. it was a very low moment for her. it really was. [inaudible] she had come aghast. i wouldn't say that to the full degree but she did and it was

very public and she was very unhappy about it. she was very proud of her fidelity to truth in her work and mike was third dashed >> i remember being in the office the day that at the low point when she turned to manage aside, there goes my pulitzer. you know, it's over. >> yeah. >> but then she said, you know, she's just being mean and us them. >> one of the book reviews for about come and help me. i do know of my daughter has read it or if i will allow her to read it. one of the viewers and this made me laugh the way i think molly wood. i think was in cleveland, not sure where it was. she said, you know, nice book. pretty good book. just don't know why they're such colorful language. and i just simply said well, you never met molly ivins then did you? sailors would leave the room

when molly began speaking. she was unfiltered and she just was that way. she didn't die on the high altar of objectivity or politeness in some ways. >> i have a question. something is very confusing to me, having grown up in dallas. molly could not have helped, would've known what the "dallas morning news" was and what dallas was. and so, why would she choose to work there? >> she worked at "the dallas times herald" -- >> the "dallas morning news." >> forgive me if i did. she went to the times herald. we actually bought -- we bought the times herald at one point and maybe that might have gendered some confusion. for many it was the more progressive more liberal. what did she say that the

"dallas morning news" was to the right of attila the hind and appleby unready. and the editors i could tell worked there. they did not like molly. we're not going to get into bidding war. there was a bidding war is offered at "the dallas times herald." here's a difference in the cultures of a mention in the book i don't mention myself by name and i use it as an illustration. i was offered a job to go to the competing paper, to lead the "dallas morning news" and go to the dallas herold. when i went there the manager said he had figured me out. he had said, you know, you don't want to work for that fascist newspaper, the "dallas morning news." so he was trying to use a mind meld with me. i guess i -- but that's where they came from. they view themselves as the more liberal progressive. they were, they just absolutely were. so molly was there and much happier. even without long leash they told her she could write

whatever she wanted. i don't think again they knew molly ivins. it was a very competitive newspaper war and appetizers were sought after and she began disturbing advertisers. maybe some of you know this, there is one line per she said, this really got her in trouble that a certain congressman from the area, she wrote, if this guy's i.q. got any lower, we're going to have to start wondering him twice a day. [laughter] you know, so she's up there doing now. she's saying if you put ronald reagan's brain and maybe it's going to fly backwards. and the one i like that they're particularly strident speech by pat buchanan quote, probably sounded better in the original german. [laughter] and then the one that's mildly off-color, but i don't know. she described arnold schwarzenegger as looking like a

sub one condom stuffed with walnuts area so there you have it. as a process of accumulation, the editors began my goodness, in her first moment after the times herald went away she got this great job at "the fort worth star-telegram." the editors for dominance of molly, we'd like your work and she said, i always liked for worth. i'll go to work there. and they said, they were still a little cautious. they said, you know, would you mind sending us some of your work, faxing it to both the bus so we can kind of take a look at it before you send it off to the copy desk work to be expedited in the paper. just want to check it out. just to take a look at it. so for her first column bear, the poor receptionist in the news or gets a phone call, it's

molly ivins coined from texas after fort worth and she says that, hi hon, i just want to let you know, can you tell the two editors, the two guys that hired me, i faxed up my letter. i've used the word. i'm sorry for saying it. and the editor both of their lives flash before their eyes, flashed back. they literally fell their jobs were in danger. they were through that they had made this horrible mistake. they fixed the language. molly didn't mind and it was a lifestyle device. tweaking the nose of the bear always. that's molly's -- molly loved young people, by the way. and i think she really fed off their sons of healthy skepticism antiauthority believes and just laughing. the very last column, and the very last bit of writing in a very pointy voice had to dictate

from her deathbed here when she was brought home to her home in travis heights. to her wonderful assistant, betsy moon, who might be here. i don't know. molly said, always remember to make the things in life ridiculous, rendered that ridiculous. get the bloviating blowhards cast in the right light. make fun of them because surely they deserve it. although senator foghorn leghorn of life who are ridiculous, make them look ridiculous. she just kept laughing to the end. the photograph in this book, you know, we lingered about what to choose. and in many ways this says it all. she really enjoys life. any other questions? guesser? >> we've noticed that an austin

paper we would see more charles columns then we would molly. do you know why that would happen? >> no, i don't. and i'm looking eiger shirt that says faux news and done? glance might be perceived to see fox news. we distort, you comply. unfair and imbalanced. if that's how you might feel? i don't know. >> there were a lot of complaints from people in ostend because usually they only ran thomas sometimes ran too, but usually they didn't run all of them and they were all edited down. so i remember there was a lot of complaints and i don't know why. [inaudible] that's a red state. i was really shocked to see that. >> ali was in a lot of places like alabama was the balance and be heard and they would get two

doses of her week but it was like that over the country and in the smaller places. >> yes, sir? >> how did the -- or how did molly meet and how did the relationship develop between her and ann richards? >> that's a fundamental part of her development. you know, molly got back to texas in 1970, more or less about the same time that ann richards was a lady here with her has been as an attorney and a civil liberties attorney and still is. ann richards, describe to us, in some ways use that word, a homemaker. and political interest, but not marked on a true political career. but austin really was in a way since i guess if you were literally politically inclined to progress and people were coming here from the outlined

regions and it still happens to this day. you know, willie nelson came to austin to get unbuttoned. grow with very little. so when molly was coming here about the same time as a lot of like-minded individuals. and they basically were a for smaller town. they were going to bump into each other in the circumstances ann richards was going to be reading "the texas observer" and her husband was going to wind up in it because he was representing conscientious errors and do an civil liberties work and so it just became an access. and and came down to "the texas observer" to hang out with their beautiful building downtown. they drank a beer as the sunset together. had a tub, a metal trough until it with ice and some perl beer and they would sit and watch the

sunset. you know, they'd be surrounded by wisteria and watch the sunset over ostend. they got to know each other in that way and begin developing political ambitions. you'll see a great pattern of molly and you might wrestle with is that molly truly supporting her in ways that journalists traditionally are encouraged not to do, holding meetings at her house, planning sessions for ann richards to move her political campaign forward. they're frankly is in this age that we live in other journalists who am you know, they like to dwell in really dark personal speculation arenas i guess i'd flame it that way. people began speculating that molly and ann richards had to be lovers. molly said once and i thought it was pretty -- if i was i'd be far more interesting.

last night she kind of left it at that. but there was speculation and a lot of it is a pattern, frankly developed by opponents of ann richards and opponents who began to really hates molly. molly had death threats issued against her. in her papers over there at their request to the fbi to please protect molly. e-mail was forwarded that seemed to contain powdered substance is much like the anthrax scares more recently. and they were sent to the fbi for analysis. it'll center the most betrayal like, hateful, unbelievable malicious. and we quote some of them and illustrate what she was contending with. molly had a lot of pressures in her life of adhering off from your very good question. ann richards was extremely important in her development. the three -- four most important

people in her life in terms of becoming the public molly ivins for her father, bob bullock, john henry faulk, and ann richards by a longshot. >> she also got to go and return daylighting campouts. her husband dave richards and that's kind of where they bonded and got to know each other. there was a group in austin that used to campouts all over texas and go on canoe rides. and that's really kind of where they formed a lot of their relationship. >> there is some amazing moments.

became richards s court and jury good friend to a lot of functions, great writer, one of the true lions of literature frankly the united states one of

the best ever in texas and so we he looks over here and decided to tetris as dr. julius erving, the great famous basketball player wearing the kind of basketball short shorts and decided to put on an afro wig and this is a rosenthal, decided to the county put on an afro wig himself. i wish there were a photograph. molly wouldn't have had to work again. she would have had leverage of "the new york times" and picture of the editor. she had a funny friendship but that story itself tells. she was a little unfiltered. they bonded through that sense of humor as mike said they were on these can campouts. bald used to show up at some of those.

bob and molly are at a community. we would love to have seen that picture. they tiptoed and went over to the water, kind of nutty stuff. brad said he was the only writer i know who faithfully chronicles this in such a beautiful way that the wonderful dogs all, one of the greatest musicians ever in america prevalent in known for being the guy out austin he really defined austin as a lot of people came here, musicians can because of dag's song. there's now the hill by the long center. if you flossy and it is a beautiful tribute. he described it as a space ship from a magic place and molly called it lotus land and said she could have. come a lot of fun and write funny things and hang out with

politicians who seem to be brave on their cost increases. she really loved speed. any other questions? thank you very much for putting up with us. [applause] [inaudible conversations] molly ivins irascible life is published by publicaffairs books. for more information, visit publicaffairsbook.com. >> joe scarborough, what are you currently reading? >> let's see, actually reading harold evans, which is a remarkable story -- you talk about when newspapers are in the heyday, harold cracks spy cases. he discovered -- had a more

remarkable career with the times of london and it is a great book. and i am reading a couple of other books, william which i go through line by line every few years, and also another book by historian, british historian called seven ages of paris, which is a great history of paris. it is about his enjoyable of a history book i've ever read. >> you're looking out earlier this year. when is your next one? >> well i don't know. adis -- we got in the top ten for two or three weeks and that was great, but it is kind of tough writing political books in this environment unless you want to write a polemic and that's not really my style so i don't know. actually the best part of writing the book was the