Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: 'Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be elected president of the United States, please pay attention.' That was late columnist Molly Ivins' advice near the end of the George W. Bush era. But lo and behold another Republican governor of Texas is running for president, and from the tone of the coverage so far Rick Perry is some kind of job-creating machine. What else should we know about Rick Perry? Texas columnist and commentator Jim Hightower will join us to talk about the real Rick Perry record. Also on the [...]
Search Results for: Molly Ivins
Sep
01
2010
'Race to the Top' and the Bill Gates Connection
Who gets to speak about what schools need?
Race to the Top (RTTT), announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009, is a $4.4 billion grant program generating more conversation than its relatively small money amount might suggest. What has people talking is its competitive structure that forces cash-strapped states to make radical changes in education in order to stay in the running—changes a National Research Council report (10/7/09) warned were not backed by research. Instead of dispersing grant money on the basis of greatest need, RTTT chooses a few winners based on the degree to which the states deliver what [...]
Jul
01
2008
Letters to the Editor
Beyond the Beltway Interesting articles in the May/June issue on media coverage of candidates’ stances on civil liberties and the semantics of waterboarding. I wondered, though, why the surveys were limited to the New York Times, the Washington Post, a few additional papers and the networks. A broader look would have found articles contradicting Cynthia Cooper’s thesis that the press is ignoring the candidates’ views on basic rights. An outstanding example was a December 22 piece in the Boston Globe by Pulitzer Prize-winner Charlie Savage, giving details of each candidate’s position on a variety of issues related to presidential power. [...]
Aug
01
2007
Media and Impeachment
Not for discussion, only for derision
Ocean Beach in San Francisco was abuzz with 1,500 people who showed up to spell out a giant “Impeach Now” with their bodies on April 28, all in the home district of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi made a splash prior to the November 2006 election by saying that a Bush impeachment was “off the table” (Washington Post, 5/12/06). Several scandals later—the Libby conviction, failing Iraq “surge,” U.S. Attorneys’ purge and missing White House e-mails—people across the nation served up their own impeachment proposals. But “impeach” is barely in the lexicon of major national media; on the rare occasion [...]
Mar
01
2007
Wall Street's Panic, Democracy's Trouble
By Molly Ivins
I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying—it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off. Let's use this as a handy exercise in journalism. What is the unexamined assumption here? That the newspaper business is dying. Is it? In 2005, publicly traded U.S. newspaper publishers reported operating profit margins of 19.2 percent, down from 21 percent in 2004, according to the Wall Street Journal. That ain't chopped liver, friends—it's more than double the average operating profit margin of the Fortune 500. So who thinks newspapers are dying? Newspaper analysts on Wall Street. In fact, the fine folks on [...]
Mar
01
2007
Editor's Note
Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
America lost one of its most incisive political writers—and FAIR one of the supporters we were most proud to have—when Molly Ivins died from breast cancer on January 31 at the age of 62. Molly got her start in journalism at the complaints department of the Houston Chronicle—which must have been an education—and was editor of the estimable Texas Observer in the 1970s, before being hired away by the New York Times as part of an ill-fated effort to spice up its stodgy writing. (She was famously called on the carpet in 1980 for calling a chicken-killing contest a “gang [...]
Feb
02
2007
John Nichols on Molly Ivins, Eric Wingerter on Chávez's 'rule by decree'
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Listeners may know that the incisive, forceful and funny columnist Molly Ivins died January 31 at age 62. We'll talk with John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for the Nation about Ivins' special place in and impact on the media landscape, and what journalists and activists would like to see happen in her memory. Also on the program: Reports that the Venezuelan congress is conferring powers on president Hugo Chávez that would allow him to 'rule by decree' in certain areas of the government are setting off alarm bells in U.S. media. But are the [...]
Feb
02
2007
Remembering Molly Ivins
Progressive voice a rarity on the op-ed page
Incisive, forceful and funny progressive columnist and author Molly Ivins died January 31 from breast cancer at the age of 62. Ivins' career included stints as a police reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and a reporter at the New York Times, but most came to know her work through reading her syndicated column, which appeared in over 300 newspapers, making her the most widely syndicated progressive columnist in the country. Throughout the years, FAIR has been proud to be associated with Molly Ivins. In a syndicated column in 2003, Ivins suggested readers could send donations to a number of [...]
