prematurely grey

Lone Starlets – New York Times

Dear Mimi Swartz (yes, that is how she spells her name–I know it seems like a misspelling), editor of Texas Monthly,

Please explain your recent Op-Ed in The New York Times. Please explain why your response to the death of Molly Ivins in The Paper of Record is to write this convoluted essay.

Sincerly,

Prematurely Grey

I asked two of the shrewdest Texas readers I know what they made of it, to make sure my response wasn’t just another case of what my mother calls jealousy. (My mother diagnoses “jealousy” whenever I disagree with a published female writer’s opinion about anything that I happen to have an opinion on as well. It’s as if I can’t have an actual difference of opinion without questioning my motives for that difference. Do I really disagree, or is it just “jealousy” that I’m not the one they call to write the Op-Ed piece in the Times when [insert name of the latest woman of national importance to die here] passes away? Perhaps my mom’s the one who’s feeling jealous at these moments. Me, I just feel pissed off.)

The shrews have weighed in and it’s unanimous: something is wrong here.

Molly Ivins dies. It reminds us that Ann Richard died recently. Which reminds Mimi Swartz that Nellie Connelly died, too. Then we get into this who-was-a-geisha thing, followed by Molly-was-no-geisha-but-she-was-not-as-she-appeared-either. Finally, she concludes with Lynn Wyatt as the last of the iconic Texas women and, while it was no picnic being an icon, maybe they did have more fun.

If you’re going, “Whuh?” right now, you, too, are a shrewd reader. You may even be a shrew. (Take a look at the connection between those two words. Who says etymology isn’t interesting? Just lost 15 minutes reading the OED.)

So, shrewd shrew that I am, this article bothers me. And, frankly, if it had been published in The Austin American Statesman instead of The New York Times, it would bother me a lot less. So, is my mom right? Am I just jealous?

Hell no.

I’m pissed off.

Again.

Mimi Swartz knows that non-Texans love Texans who poke fun at Texas. She says as much in the piece. They’re pretty much the only kind of Texans to get major attention nationally, unless you’re a complete crook who takes over the House of Representatives (or the White House) and sells it to the highest bidder. And it takes a whole lot of people in Texas to bring attention to that kind of Texan, all the while risking their futures because the crook has things so stacked in his favor that the state remains under his power, albeit through the weakest of his links, his handpicked Crony of the House, despite this fall’s fall from his high seat in Washington.

That’s what makes me so mad–at Mimi Swartz, at Molly Ivins, at The New York Times. We cannot afford to simply roll our eyes and say, “That’s Texas for you.” Now, I don’t think that’s what Molly Ivins really wanted us to do. (Please don’t bombard me with “How dare you put words in Molly’s mouth” comments, a la the stuff I got when I imagined Ann Richards scolding Kinky from beyond the grave.) She did it, no doubt, to keep her sanity. And she tirelessly inspired and supported efforts in Texas to clean things up, to promote change, and to make life in Texas better for ordinary people.

However, by “playing the Professional Texan,” Molly Ivins not only found her way through the sexist corridors of Texas politics in the 1970s, she often presented a Texas that the outside world loved but could dismiss with an unearned “That’s Texas for you.” There was also this sort of I-read-Molly-Ivins-so-I-understand-what-it’s-really-like-in-Texas attitude that you would come up against. The outside world (yes, I sound completely off my rocker here, but when you live in Texas, you know there actually is an outside world and an inside one) could then feel reassured that there was really nothing that could be done. That’s Texas for you.
Anybody who knows me, anybody who’s been aware of my years-long obsession with the long-term implications of Tom DeLay’s redistricting, knows that the disconnect between the inside reality of Texas and the outside (bluer) view drives me insane. One of the Republican Party’s greatest strengths is the notion that Texas is a lost cause for Democrats. Period. And one of the things that plays right into this notion is “That’s Texas for you” as experienced by the outside world. In Texas, we say “That’s Texas for you,” so we don’t kill ourselves right here and now instead of fight for children’s health insurance funding to be fully restored or lobby against the seventeen dirty coal plants that we could make a whole lot less dirty or create a reasonable immigration policy in the state with the longest border or face the disaster that is the ten-year legacy of No Child Left Behind: The Texas Prototype. We say it to keep on keeping on.

But when the outside world says, “That’s Texas for you,” it’s with the dismissive waive of the hand and the turning of attention to places that really matter. It’s the legacy of blaming Texas for the Kennedy assassination and LBJ’s handling of Vietnam. And it leaves those of us struggling against the Republican strangle-hold on the state tilting at windmills, alone.
So why does it matter what Mimi Swartz says about three great Texas women’s passing? She’s not making a political argument; she’s just commenting on the price that these parger-than-life women seem to have paid (not much different from the cost to other similarly-sized people, of either gender and any location). Or is she? What about this:

Ms. Ivins and Ms. Richards in particular were very interested in bringing about social change; the relationship between the state as a whole and the liberal coterie of which they were an integral part is one of the great, doomed romances of Texas history.

There it is. It was a doomed romance, a faded love whose objects have passed away. The political struggle of the last thirty-five years, which began with the Sharpstown scandal that ended the political career of the heir-apparent to LBJ and resulted in the political machinery that actually stole the 2000 presidential election, is nothing more than another chapter in a dusty paperback.

That’s Texas for you.