My first blog

Another Christmas over and done with, but it was a good one. One of my best presents this year is the book, Molly Ivins, A Rebel Life, by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith. Molly was my hero, her columns made me smile and cheer, and I felt that I lost an old friend when she died in January, 2007. Her incisive wit and observations echoed many of my own grumblings about life, politics and the business world. How could such a person--a woman no less, and from Texas, no less-- become such a powerhouse? I eagerly set out to find the answers in the book.

Well. It's been a bit of a disappointment, so far. Her early life was one of privilege in highly segregated Houston. Her days were filled with the typically insipid activities of the rich: yachting, country clubs, parties, excessive drinking & smoking. The requisite trips abroad. The hob-nobbing with society's high rollers and wheeler-dealers. All of the trappings of oil-soaked wealth. She did read a lot. I'll give her that.

She was a bit of a rebel during these early years, but it seemed to be for the purpose of being deliberately ornery, to get her dad's goat, more than from a deep abiding sense of injustice. I'm only on page 89 and hopefully she will see the light soon.

Molly was enrolled in Columbia University in the '60's and I wondered if she knew James Simon Kunen, who around the same time wrote the fabulous "The Strawberry Statement" about Columbia student war protests (and later wrote "Standard Operating Procedure" about the My Lai massacre). Even I, as a young teen, was moved by the anti-war culture. It seems that if she was authentically driven by anti-war sentiment, these two would have sought each other out. There was no mention of him in this biography, but I wonder if their paths crossed?

And that, of course, brings the question: Where is the outrage of today? Why aren't students protesting on campuses, occupying buildings, blocking traffic? We have no fewer causes to protest these days, and even though the draft is not one of them, where is everyone?