Y'all Don't Despair, Ivins Tells UW Crowd

By: Chuck Nowlen

Scared of your government under George W. Bush? Worried by the wartime notion "that we'll make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free"?

Firebrand author and columnist Molly Ivins had the antidote for a decidedly liberal UW-Madison audience Monday night: "I can tell you guys are really desperate and you need some cheerin' up," Ivins deadpanned at one point, bringing the packed Wisconsin Union Theater house down - seemingly with her irreverent, Texas-drawl delivery alone. "Well, just be happy that you don't wake up every mornin' in Texas, where the price of gas is so high that women who want to run over their husbands have to car pool."

Not that Ivins' 90-minute talk - the last in the Wisconsin Union Directorate's 2002-2003 Distinguished Lecture Series - was anything close to one-liner escapism.

Her topics, in fact, were dead serious at their core: the ironic arrogance of a superpower democracy at war, the tyranny of religious fundamentalism mixed with government and the dark chutzpah of quasi-governmental corporate corruption, to name just a few.

But somehow, Ivins made it all less hopeless for many in the audience, including one middle-aged woman who confessed that in post-Iraq-war America, she is more afraid of her government than ever before in her life.

"It is just really important to keep laughing - and there are comedic elements in all this", Ivins told the woman when pressed for advice. "I mean, God help us all if we ever have to take George W. Bush seriously."

She added: "I see no reason to panic just because things are really terrible. I, like all of you, am desperately worried. But it has to do with retaining our sanity. And I'm sure as hell not giving up."

Underscoring those points near the beginning of her lecture, Ivins rattled off the following among a string of verbatim George Dubya quotes:

"Here, in the homeland of our country..."

"I promise to hear what is said here even though I wasn't here."

"The unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the whole region."

Later came Ivins' nod to Wisconsin's ongoing caucus scandal and the state's budget deficit crisis: "Y'all have some people who might be indicted? I'm so happy for you!" she exclaimed. "Why, in Texas, five speakers of the House in a row were indicted. Then we had one who was shot to death by his wife. Now, of course, she wasn't indicted - because in Texas we recognize public service when we see it."

As for her state's own $15 billion budget deficit fix: "We used to have a program where with mentally disturbed prisoners out on probation, the state paid for their medication. Well, we've axed their medication so they'll now be running around on the street without their meds - and we all sure look forward to that!"

Not that it was all dark, bittersweet humor, either. Near the end of her prepared remarks, for example, Ivins offered "the world's most painless civics lesson" to cynical young people in the audience who have given up on participatory democracy.

"The trouble is, you don't have a choice", she admonished them. "You can't look at politics as if it were a show on TV or a picture on the wall. This is the warp and the woof of your life; it's the textbooks your children will read in school!"

Drawing thunderous applause as she then read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, Ivins paused briefly before continuing: "You do not let a legacy like that die out of boredom or cynicism. Government is not those people in the state Capitol. It is us. It is me. It is you. We own this country! We run this country! They have to do what we say!"

It was, no doubt, just what some in the audience needed to hear.