T A B L E_.T A L K

Electronic zines: Which are your favorites? Make your recommendations in the Media area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

The squirrel and the computer
By Robert Winkler
When a small life and a computer screen both went blank at the same moment, something else lit up: conscience
(04/20/98)

Bestseller Hell
By Jon Carroll
James Van Praagh's friendly ghosts
(04/17/98)

The curse of the Pulitzer?
By Dwight Garner
Will the New York Times put book critic Michiko Kakutani out to pasture now that she's won the big prize?
(04/16/98)

Greener pastures
By Jenn Shreve
Out of the growing glut of finance mags, one zine is poised to capture the expanding market of young investors
(04/15/98)

Under the Covers
By James Poniewozik
What kind of man
reads ...
(04/14/98)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

_______The best little ass-kicking
_______columnist in Texas

WHEN MOLLY IVINS SLAPS LEATHER, CORPORATE FAT CATS, WELFARE SLASHERS AND ARROGANT MEDIA STARS BITE THE DUST.

BY CAROL LLOYD
In an era when the funny columnists are apolitical and the engaged ones humorless, Molly Ivins is an anomaly: a woman driven by political passion who is also funny as hell. In her columns, her voice is so effortless, whimsical and candid that it seems like she's entertaining friends at a party while she writes. But in person, the gravity of her opinions takes the forefront -- the little "y'alls" and "when pigs fly!" seem thrown in only to sweeten the rhetorical pot. She may be a funny Texas redhead on the outside, but make no mistake, on the inside she's a hard-core policy wonk. She reads four to eight newspapers a day. Give her half a chance and she'll rattle off the exact numbers of congressional votes from years past until your ears bleed. And she freely admits to the unthinkable: She not only likes politics, but politicians as well.

In her new book, "You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You: Politics in the Clinton Years" (Random House), a collection drawn from her popular syndicated column, Ivins covers a wide array of political and personal topics. She rails against the cruelty of welfare reform, the meanness of Howard Stern and the unscrupulous strategies of Newt Gingrich. She also writes about food fetishes in Berkeley, Calif., the Republic of Texas movement and the death of her mother. But the topic that bears the book's folksy title (and its central theme) is the unsexiest topic of all: campaign finance reform. Ivins, an intense woman with a habit of whispering her most emphatic words, spoke to Salon in our offices in San Francisco between sips of black coffee and puffs on verboten cigarettes. When asked how her book tour was unfolding, she drawled dryly: "It's very peculiar. Nobody wants to talk about anything but the president's dick."

Right now we have a country that's fixated on one story. How does that affect your work?

On book tour I have developed all these witty ways to suggest that we change the subject: With all due respect to the president's private parts, I do think we have bigger problems.

And I can't get them off it. The interesting thing is that I don't think that the public is interested at all. The only people who have kept their heads are the American people. They're not happy that the president of the United States may have a serious zipper problem. But they are perfectly capable of making distinctions. The hilarious thing is watching people in our business look at these polls and become extremely indignant: "It just proves that the American people don't have any morals left at all." There is nothing wrong with the morals of the American people, but there's quite a bit wrong with the morals of the capital press corps, in my opinion. It's enough to gag a maggot.

Why do you think that the Washington Post and New York Times have gotten so invested in Kenneth Starr?

That is a very good question. I said to a friend at the White House, "You know that Susan Webber Wright is going to throw this case out, at which point I expect the capital press corps to have a kind of giant collective Emily Latella moment in which they say, "Oh, never mind." And he said, "No it won't happen, they have too much invested."

But why?

Some people I think are looking to bring down a president and do the Woodward-Bernstein thing and put a big notch in their gun. It's a city peculiarly vulnerable to pack journalism. And to some extent it's not entirely the fault of the media. But Washington is in the throes of this obsession, this scandal -- I was there for two days so I'm a great expert on this phenomenon. When you talk to people at the White House they are genuinely convinced that Kenneth Starr is a madman, like Ahab after the white whale. That he does not care who he hurts or what it takes. The Starr people are genuinely convinced that Clinton is one of the biggest sleazoids that ever lived, that he's gotten away with God knows what over the years, and that it's all been covered up.

So here are these two giant power centers in Washington just pulsing hatred at one another over the city and everyone is caught up in it. If you step back and say, "Y'all, probably the truth is somewhere in between," they all begin to boo and hiss at you. Remember high school when what Betty Lu said about what her and Jim and Joe Bob did the other night was just the most important thing in the whole world? It's like that.

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