Who Let the Dogs In? Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGES

  DEDICATION

  INTRODUCTION

  The Reign of Ronald Reagan and Big

  George

  The Clinton Years

  Texas Animals

  Shrub

  Heroes and Heels (and Madonna)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Other books by Molly Ivins

  COPYRIGHT

  To my brother, Andy,

  who makes me laugh more than

  anyone I know. Viva Chateau Bubba.

  Introduction

  The editor of this book is Jonathan Karp, an alarmingly bright young man who appears to be about fourteen years old. He says he considers this my “career retrospective.”

  “Jonathan,” I explained, “that makes me feel slightly dead.”

  So here I sit with a smart kid’s selection of “my best work,” trying to figure out if it means anything. Do we have a Theme here? Are there Underlying Meanings? Refrains? Have I done anything for forty years except laugh at the perfectly improbable nincompoops who get themselves elected to public office?

  I guess the most amazing refrain is that I still love politics, and I think it matters to every American in more ways than most of them ever guess. Also, I still think it’s funny. I consider that especially moving testimony, given that American politics is in a state of open corruption and intellectual rot.

  I have been optimistic to the point of idiocy my whole life, a congenital defect. I assumed that as I grew older I would become an unnaturally cheerful old fart. Instead, I find both journalism and politics, the two fields I have cared about most, in a parlous state, and rather than coasting out on a long, merry burst of laughter, I am buckling up for what looks like a last hard stand against Mordor. Natch, I’m sure we’ll win. But we need a trumpet call in here—for attention, for help, to battle. Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of their country. Attention must be paid. Work needs to be done.

  I may be an optimist, but I am also as frightened as I have been for this country since the Saturday Night Massacre under Richard Nixon, when I really thought he might call out the troops. In a different way, almost with our permission, I think we’re that close to losing all of it – the Constitution, freedom, rule of law, even the dream of social and economic justice.

  Did you know that in nineteenth-century America, politics was the entertainment that more than filled in for both television and movies? It was the equivalent of all the college and professional sports teams added together—people listened to politicians giving loooong speeches as though . . . as though their lives depended on it. It was considered better than the zoo, better than the circus, better than the Friday Night Lights. And it wasn’t about who won or lost, it was about how your life would turn out. Americans understood that; they knew their decisions mattered.

  Where did it go, that understanding? When did politics become about them—those people in Washington or those people in Austin—instead of about us? We own it, we run it; we tell them what to do; it’s our country, not theirs. They’re just the people we hired to drive the bus for a while. I hear people say, “I’m just not interested in politics.” “Oh, they’re all crooks anyway.” Or “There’s nothing I can do.”

  Because I have been writing about politics for forty years, I know where the cynicism comes from, and I would not presume to tell you it is misplaced. The system is so screwed up, if you think it’s not worth participating in, then give yourself credit for being alert. But not for being smart. How smart is it to throw away power? How smart is it to throw away the most magnificent political legacy any people has ever received? This is our birthright; we are the heirs; we get it just for being born here. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women!] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” More than two hundred years later, people all over the world are willing to die for a chance to live by those ideals. They died in South Africa, they died at Tiananmen Square, they’re dying today in Myanmar.

  Don’t throw that legacy away out of cynicism or boredom or inanition: “I’m just not interested in politics.” “There’s nothing I can do.”

  You have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who have ever lived on this planet. You can not only vote, you can register other people to vote, round up your friends, get out and do political education, talk to people, laugh with people, call the radio, write the paper, write your elected representative, use your e-mail list, put up signs, march, volunteer, and raise hell. All your life, no matter what else you do—butcher, baker, beggarman, thief/doctor, lawyer, Indian chief—you have another job, another responsibility: You are a citizen. It is an obligation that requires attention and effort. And on top of that, you should make it into a hell of a lot of fun.

  Having fun while fighting for freedom is, as you will see from this book, my major life cause. I see no reason why we should not laugh, and in fact I think we should insist on it.

  So if all this is so gloriously funny, what went wrong? We won the cold war after fifty years, and suddenly our politics is sour, angry, ugly, full of people who can’t discuss public affairs without getting all red in the face. The tendons stand out in their necks and their wattles start to shake like a turkey gobbler’s. Good grief.

  Plenty of blame to go around for this revolting development, but those who deliberately corrupt our language for political advantage deserve some special ring in hell. One is Rush Limbaugh, a silly man. Another is Newt Gingrich, who has done much to poison the well of public debate: “sick,” “twisted,” “pathetic,” “bizarre,” “traitor.”

  But I think far more damaging is the planned, corporately funded, interlocking web of propaganda—the think tanks underwritten by corporate funders, the “academic journals” underwritten by corporate funders, and right-wing newspapers, radio, and television, not to mention low-life, bottom-feeding scandal-mongers, all funded by huge right-wing money. Hillary Clinton once called this “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” but it is not. It is all right there, out in the open; it has been growing before our eyes for more than thirty years for anyone to see.

  Coming up in East Texas, I knew many racists and batshit John Birchers, as well as a few splendid Goldwater libertarians. For a long time, “conservative” was just another word for “racist” in Texas: some were more polite than others. I first ran across another form of conservatism in the Rocky Mountains in the late 1970s as the “Sagebrush Rebellion” or “Wise Use” movement, corporate-funded anti-environmentalism.

  From the beginning, it was all about right-wing money—H. L. Hunt, Coors, Mellon-Scaife—that old batty anti–New Deal money that was always behind the Republican right. They were against taxes on rich people and against taxes on business, didn’t want limits on pollution, didn’t want limits on exploiting natural resources. Greed is good, the market is God—same old sorry claptrap we have heard since the era of the robber barons. Unleash capitalism and everything will be dandy, as though Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman were actually saying anything new. Sheesh.

  Having been born and raised amongst foot-washing Baptists, I’ve never considered them strange or Other. They are my friends, my neighbors, and my kinfolk. Good people—they care for the sick and visit shut-ins, and they have the best hymns. They didn’t used to be political. I suspect that changed for three reasons: Roe v. Wade; soi-disant (as we often
say in Lubbock) sophisticates who created resentment by dissing and dismissing believers; and manipulation by political professionals. Abortion is an issue over which one of the sides is unable to agree to disagree. The obvious and perhaps flip answer on abortion is that if you believe abortion is murder you shouldn’t have one. If you believe that every fertilized human egg is in fact the precise equivalent of a full human being, no one, including the government, should be able to force you to have an abortion.

  People (especially men) tend to be uncomfortable with discussions of female plumbing, so I apologize for bringing up what an old friend calls “dank, womblike subjects.” Still, approximately one fourth of all fertilized eggs are swept out on the menstrual tide before they even get near to implanting themselves in the uterine wall, and we do not hold funerals over Kotex or Tampax. I suggest to you this means that the beginning of life is not a single specific event, but rather a process that deserves increasing respect as it continues toward birth—precisely the tripartite system set up under Roe v. Wade (and if you hear Roe v. Wade described as “abortion on demand,” you are listening to a liar).

  I respect those who oppose abortion, but I do not think they have a right to use the law as an instrument of coercion against people who do not believe (and it is a matter of faith) as they do. They have no right to make this decision for someone else, nor does the government. Some women do not have the physical, psychological, or economic resources to bear a child. There were an estimated one million abortions a year in this country before Roe. Abortion can be safe and legal, or dirty and illegal. It cannot be stopped.

  The anti-choice crowd have every right to make their arguments, but I think they are being used. Ditto the people who think gays are an abomination. I do not think the Christian right is driving what is happening in this country politically, nor is it even an equal partner with economic fundamentalism. There’s a large extent to which the Christian right is being played for a bunch of suckers by country club conservatives who are interested in nothing more than their own pocketbooks.

  Everybody knows God is nonpartisan, but I swear Jesus was a liberal—the best, the biggest, the original bleeding heart—the one who embraced the outcasts, the model for us all. Just read the stuff in the New Testament written in red. Don’t ever try to convince me that Christianity is right-wing. As for the economic conservatives, who are driving this entire insane detour away from liberty and justice for all, well, as Wright Patman once observed, “The rich and powerful in our country are very greedy. This has many times been demonstrated. It is natural that they should seek ever more power and wealth, but where there is greed there is no vision. And as the Good Book says, where there is no vision, the people perish.”

  We are witnessing such an astonishing demonstration of greed, such a ridiculous maldistribution of wealth. The average CEO makes three hundred times as much as the average worker. (In 1982, it was just forty-two times.) The richest 1 percent of Americans have 33.4 percent of the total wealth of the country, while the bottom 80 percent have 15.6 percent. According to government data, in 2000, the richest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. Between 1990 and 2003, CEO pay rose 313 percent. The S&P 500 rose 242 percent. Corporate profits rose 128 percent. Average worker pay rose 49 percent. Inflation rose 41 percent. This is not capitalism, this is some sick, extreme deformation of a system that always needs regulation.

  How many ways can you measure what’s wrong? According to the Census Bureau, poverty is getting worse and household income is falling: The poverty rate is 12.1 percent, or about 35 million people, including 12 million children. Median household income dropped 3.3 percent between 2001 and 2003. Between 2002 and 2004, the richest 1 percent of Americans got $197 billion in tax cuts under the Bush plan. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a fountain of misinformation, moans about liberals who want “class warfare” and “income redistribution.” Since 1962, there has been a 17 percent decline in federal revenue from progressive taxes and a 135 percent increase in the share of revenue from regressive taxes. There has been a 67 percent drop in the share contributed by corporations and a 17 percent increase in individuals’ share. The disparities are becoming worse, not as a consequence of some inexorable economic law, but as a direct result of unfair taxation and unfair legislation.

  So, what? We’re supposed to think a mere vote outweighs a $2,000 campaign contribution? Not to mention the $2,000 from everyone on the entire corporate masthead—a little campaign-money trick called “bundling.” Beloved fellow citizens, it stinks, it rots, it is disgusting and full of worms—it is not just not working for us—this system is screwing us. Oldest saying in politics: “You got to dance with them what brung you.” Not that hard to figure out how to fix it. Public campaign financing—kick in a couple of tax dollars to pay for campaigns, so when pols get elected, they got nobody to dance with but us, the people.

  Public schools and health care are falling apart while the right sits around griping about high taxes. What is this, France under Louis XIV, with aristos and peasants? Working-class people are getting screwed, and Lord knows it’s not because they’re not working hard. We finally get a so-called recovery, and none of the profits go to the workers.

  Come on, Americans: This sucks. Democracy and capitalism are separate systems: one political, one economic. Capitalism is the best system yet invented for the creation of wealth, but it does dog on its own for social justice; it must be mitigated; it needs to be refereed by government intervention (and the refs damn well better not be on the take). Otherwise, we’re going to end up like the banana republics in Latin America—rich people shut up behind high walls and the rest of us in slums. This is not rocket science. We’ve had decades and even centuries of experience with capitalism: We know how to harness it so it works for most of the people most of the time.

  As I look at the “career,” it’s hard for me to remember what it was like to be naïve, but I have never been able to move beyond the experience of being shocked by people who think it’s OK to lie, cheat, and steal in politics. My old friend Linda Lewis and I once came to agreement on what we consider the irreducible minimum of decency in politics, based on our experience with a sorry class of pseudoliberals called “poverty pimps”: Don’t Steal the People’s Money.

  Here are a few other things I have learned or come across that might be useful to you as citizens.

  • “When Dr. Johnson declared patriotism to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, he underestimated the potential of reform.” —Roscoe Conklin, U.S. Senator from New York, 1890 (I used to think “reformer” was a noble word, until I met the Medicare Prescription Reform Bill, otherwise known as “How to Brown-nose Big Pharmaceutical Campaign Contributors While Literally Screwing the Life Out of Old Folks.”)

  • “Being a man is not letting anybody be humiliated, not letting the people around you feel degraded.” —from Kiss of the Spider Woman

  • One of the wisest editors I ever had was Dick Cunningham, who observed, “American journalists inherit the freest press in the world, but they enslave themselves to two masters: the conventions of their craft and the limits their society puts on what is acceptable thought.” How many times have I been clocked by various kinds of thought police? One of my faves is the condescending “You do realize, Miss Ivins, that the polls show the great majority of Americans do not agree with you.” No shit? The struggle to escape conventional wisdom is, in my opinion, made much easier by avoiding Washington, D.C. I like to pretend it’s easy for me to say, “Aw, kiss my ass.” What is in fact terrifying to me is how often I accept “what everybody else says.”

  • Huey Long observed: “If totalitarianism comes to this country, it will surely do so in the guise of 100 percent Americanism.”

  • I’ve had encounters with sexism that range from infuriating to depressing to hilarious, but my favorite is still the Texas lawmaker who said in all sincere admiration, “Young lady, you got huevos.”

 
• There are 148,000 people in prison in Texas; 72,000 of them are there for nonviolent crimes.

  • “News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” —Lord Northcote

  • “The character issue is driving all the characters out of politics.” —Jan Reid

  • “Racism is not the KKK; it’s when there’s serious inequity and not a passion to do something about it.” —Pat Hayes, president, St. Edward’s University

  • “Many conservatives despise government and perhaps for that reason disregard civilities suited to its functioning. People who despise government should not be entrusted with it. Important kinds of public spiritedness are foreign to them.” —George Will

  • “I wouldn’t ask a plumber how he treated his wife and children before letting him loose on the leaking toilet.” —P. D. James

  So here we are in the glorious election year of 2004, with a boring stiff in one corner and stupefying incompetence in the other. Now they all ask: “Who knew Dubya Bush would be this bad? I realize there is nothing more annoying than someone who says, “I told you so.” But dammit, the next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be in the White House, would you please pay attention? I knew him, but even I hadn’t counted on what fear would do to him. Fear makes people do terrible things. I also think Bush is badly advised, chiefly by Dick Cheney and also by that whole nest of neo-cons in the Defense Department. One of the most elementary mistakes you can make in politics is to listen only to people who agree with you. How could they be so stupid? Karl?