This is a series of tributes to Molly Ivins, a writer of passion and principle and a longtime friend of the magazine. Also, listen to Molly Ivins's last interview with Laura Flanders on RadioNation.

Laura Flanders

Host, RadioNation

From too many miles away, I read the obituaries for the columnist Molly Ivins. The British Guardian published an appreciation with a charming photograph and other newspapers noted her death, but Molly Ivins demands a more visceral form of mourning because it's not just her prose we'll miss, it's her presence.

The first time I saw her stride onto a stage (in Boulder, I believe, in the mid-1990s) I felt reassured. Here was Ivins: enormously tall, clear, adamant, absolutely undaunted. It seemed as if she cleared the air and in so doing invited the rest of us to inhale deeper, talk louder and live more largely.

One of the truly brave hearts in journalism, Ivins had a daring that gave us courage. Like Dorothy's dog, she drew back the fancy-looking drapery of intimidation and spin to reveal the shriveled-up wicked wizards. She cut the despots down to a size that the rest of us could bear to grapple with.

For us women, Ivins broke the rules for participation in the public realm. She didn't demur, didn't giggle, didn't pretend for an instant not to care. She talked as forthrightly about cancer as she did about the Klan. "Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun," she wrote after being diagnosed with the disease in 1999. "First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."

Her answer to the KKK was to defend to the death the bigots' right to march and then to encourage mass-mooning of the marchers. (Listen to her last interview on RadioNation.)

Politics, she said, is nothing you can leave to politicians. "Politics is about you and me. Those people in Washington we just hired to drive the bus for a while." On her last appearance on RadioNation in 2005, I asked her for advice on remaining upbeat in hard times. "Things are not getting worse," Ivins replied. "Go back and read leftists in times past and things were always this bad. That's very consoling." On the other hand, she added, things probably will get worse. "What that means is, these are going to turn out to be the good old days. Think what a fool you will feel like if you don't enjoy them now while you have the chance."

"You have to have fun while you're fighting for freedom," said Molly.

Hers was a generous confidence. She made us believe that if she could speak with such clear-as-a-bell conviction, so could we. If she could be joyous in the fight, so can we. Ivins summoned us to the task by calling us (all of us, strugglers on the left) her "beloveds."

So it's right that we mourn Molly, but it'd be better if we became more like her. I'm willing to have fun, but I want to see more fight. Breast cancer is taking our she-roes. For starters, how about a real defense appropriation? Bush's budget plan includes $623 billion for the military next year; instead of $623 billion for Bush, how about $623 billion to stop breast cancer?

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