Good Golly

Earlier this century — hah! — I created a master’s thesis on how newspaper humor columns have changed. In figuring out how to tackle this, how to quantify the research to make it as solid as possible, I hit a problem: Not all humor writers are alike. Some seem to write with the intent of making readers laugh and others use humor to make points. This is social science so I needn’t worry that the continuum between these poles is thick fuzzy yarn, not shimmeringly clear fishing line. The ends overlap, they’re subjective. Columnists are not necessarily accurately self-evaluatory — hey, does that sound scholarly — and their editors and syndicate distributors aren’t, either. Also, editors must justify their decisions, and syndicates say all their writers are witty.

When I looked closely at the nation’s top columnists of 1980 and and 2000, two of the biggest, Art Buchwald and Molly Ivins, best represented the extremes. Yeah, they’re both on the liberal or Democratic end of the political spectrum, but in reading Art he consistently aimed for the punch line, tackling whoever was in power and had messed up. Art told stories, tales he essentially invented. Molly always was analytical, often in a “here he goes again,” but with colorful language and with one-liner comic’s wit, be it Ford or Carter. A Southern, specifically Texan, style of hyperbole was her specialty.

Twenty-five years ago (oh, that hurts), I worked in the Dallas area, and Austin- or New York-based Molly then called the late Dallas Times Herald home. I heard her speak a time or two to the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. That was a different experience than her writing. It was different than her occasional broadcast work. That woman cussed in extraordinary ways. It could have been funny to hear an obviously classy, obviously brilliant, mature woman cuss like a sailor.

It wasn’t like that. This was an intellectual writer in total control of language, who used the profane with such alacrity she could have been instead citing French postmodernists in a dissection of the Reagan administration. Instead she glibly referred to the barnyard, or maybe it was the stockyard, being Texas.

Molly, 20 years younger than Art, died at the end of January, and Art days earlier. -30-