Lou Dubose

Book on CD read by Molly Ivins

The subtitle really says it all. Oh, how I miss Molly Ivins!

Ivins was a political commentator / journalist based in Texas. In an earlier book, she and Dubose examined the George W Bush’s flawed policies and abysmal record as governor of Texas. In this second book on “Dubya” they look at his presidency and how he has used many of those same strategies in running the nation.

It’s a somewhat dated book, today, and yet frighteningly appropriate in this show more “primary” season. Ivins doesn’t pull any punches and gives many examples of the effects of his ideology and policies on mainstream Americans struggling to make it – heck, forget “succeeding,” they’re struggling to survive.

Molly Ivins does a great job reading the audio. I feel like my best friend is just telling it like it is over a morning coffee (or a scotch at the bar)…. show less

Published in 2005 and written before the 2004 election but uncannily apt now. The legacy of the Bush years and the various and colossal messes are all laid out in their full horror. Brilliant, witty, acerbic, funny, all at once and much too accurate. I felt a particular pang at the mention of ACORN and wished even more that Molly was still with us.

The irony is that the faults that the authors attribute to Cheney (and which the reader might recoil in horror from) would probably be points of pride to Cheney himself. As he might have said: 'Did I amass a fortune at the expense of other people? Yes, because that's the natural order of things. Did I subvert the Government of the United States? It had been subverted by liberals, I simply put things back in place. Did this cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? Sure, but they show more don't count, people die all the time anyway. Get over it and stop bleating.' Students of ancient Rome might recognize a few characters here...' show less

"Throughout her long career of 'afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted,' the cause closest to Molly Ivins heart was working to protect the freedoms we all value. Sadly, today we're living in a time when dissent is equated with giving aid to terrorists, when any of us can be held in prison without even knowing the charges against us, and when our constitutional rights are being interpreted by a president who calls himself 'The Decider.'

"Ivins got the idea for Bill of Wrongs show more while touring America to honor her promise to speak out, gratis, at least once a month in defense of free speech. In her travels Ivins met ordinary people going to extraordinary measures to safeguard our most precious liberties, and when she first started writing this book she intended it to be a joyous celebration of those heroes. But during the Bush years, the project's focus changed. Ivins became concerned about threats to our cherished freedoms -- the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus -- and she observed with anger how dissent in the defense of liberties was being characterized as treason by the Bush administration and its enablers.

"From illegal wiretaps, the unlawful imprisonment of American citizens, and the undermining of freedom of the press to the creeping influence of religious extremism on our national agenda and the erosion of the checks and balances that prevent a president from seizing unitary powers, Ivins and her long-time collaborator, Lou Dubose, co-author of Shrub and Bushwhacked, describe the attacks on America's vital constitutional guarantees. With devastating humor and keen eyes for deceit and hypocrisy, they show just how severe these incursions have become, and they ask us all to take an active role in protecting the Bill of Rights.

"In life and on the printed page, Molly Ivins was too cool to offer a poshumous valedictory (or even take a victory lap for her many triumphs over inane, vainglorious, and addlepated politicos). But in Bill of Wrongs, her final and perhaps greatest book, the irrepressible Molly Ivins really does have the last word."
~~front flap

This book was harder to read than some of her others were. Her wickedly devastating sense of humor isn't as prevalent as it usually was. Which was probably a wise decision -- these accounts of people caught up in the flagrant abuses of power by the Bush Administration after 9/11 are chilling, and should be a wake-up call, and a call to action, for every American citizen. Humor might have detracted from the severity and urgency of these message, or distracted from the message itself. Laughter, especially a good belly laugh, and make you forget what you were doing before it hit. And this is very serious stuff -- so serious that Molly spent her last months on this earth working on this book.

Although there's a temptation to relegate this book to the unimportant history shelf, since the Bush Administration is done now, we should resist the temptation. The policies and mindsets put in place during that era didn't disappear just because Bush retired to Crawford. There are echoes and direct descendents with us today, and in many ways "they" are still trying to take away our freedoms.

But enough political rant. The book is well researched, well written and critically important. As all of Molly's books are. show less