The Dallas Morning News<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nArt performed the latter humor too. How did they get by with it? Art somehow gets called “gentle,” and Molly is praised by the politicians whom she mocked. (On your favorite search engine, type in “Ivins quotes.”) Mocking someone for sport — and Art’s and Molly’s glee is self-evident — back when you were in school would get you jumped behind the gym, and adults handle it more efficiently if often without leaving obvious bruises. In fact, pundits on the right generally bring hostility back on themselves when they attack with what they call wit, with the sole exceptions being P.J. O’Rourke and James Lileks.<\/p>\n
This has had me stumped. It made me recall all of the careful revisions I’ve done over the years to avoid making direct attacks, fearing not reprisal but offending readers. U.S. history shows incredible bombast aimed at presidents for the first 120 years or so of the Republic that no one could get by with after the World War II. None of the recent flourish of gasbags on cable TV have an eighth of the imagination to come up with what was said about Jefferson or Lincoln.<\/p>\n
Now I may have it: Art and Molly were not aiming to cut their targets down, but they wanted the world to be better. When that inevitably meant specific leaders had to shape up or get out of the way, Art and Molly took personal aim with sketch-comedy satire and colorful insult, respectively. These two journalists were optimists. They staked their lives on the possibility for improvement. As a result no one cracked bottles on their heads, and they died natural deaths, though too early. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recently late Art Buchwald said something to the effect of that writing political humor meant he never ran out of ideas, he had five or six every morning (when I find that quote I’ll revise this). The even-more recently late Molly Ivins said something like she thanked the good Lord for giving her infinite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words","tag-columnist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":267,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/good-golly\/","url_meta":{"origin":269,"position":0},"title":"Good Golly","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":327,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/06\/dave-barry-but-seriously\/","url_meta":{"origin":269,"position":1},"title":"Dave Barry, But Seriously","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"PHILADELPHIA -- Amazing speakers addressed the opening morning of the 31st annual conference of the National Conference of Christians and Columnists, er, National Conference for Columnists and Justice, er, National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Time, and the potential for flagging interest (mine or readers?), prevents a full transcription of today's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philadelphia Phreedom"","block_context":{"text":"Philadelphia Phreedom","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/philadelphia-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"With endless good humor, Dave poses with everyone.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/daveben.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":366,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/10\/alas-richard\/","url_meta":{"origin":269,"position":2},"title":"Alas, Richard","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Humorist Richard Allin died Thursday in Little Rock. He was 77. The following is why he's important. It's from the acknowledgments page of my journalism master's thesis, spring 2003. At the family breakfast table in Fort Smith, 30 to 35 years ago, Dad laughing would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4394,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2013\/07\/hartford-conference-notes\/","url_meta":{"origin":269,"position":3},"title":"Heartin’ Historic Hartford","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"For most summers, Brick has included reportage from the annual conferences of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. They were long, even when broken into several posts per weekend. Reporting this year's, in Hartford, Conn., was tricky because I left my seat and note-taking repeatedly\u00a0 when called away to troubleshoot.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "UConn and More"","block_context":{"text":"UConn and More","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/hartford-2013\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":106,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/10\/proud-of-arrogance\/","url_meta":{"origin":269,"position":4},"title":"Proud of arrogance","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 4, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005: Apparently, I spoke out of turn. I didn't mean to cause a stunned silence but rather say something I thought was not out of line, not unusual. I said the same thing to two different audiences, and got this same reaction:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1408,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/06\/hunting-and-gathering-information\/","url_meta":{"origin":269,"position":5},"title":"Hunting and Gathering … Information","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"VENTURA, Calif. -- The annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists convened in the morning, hewing closely to the announced theme of \"Survive and Thrive.\" Yes, we heard tips; the fate of newspapers may be out of our control, but columnists both staff and freelance theoretically have a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Few Bullets More"","block_context":{"text":"Few Bullets More","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/ventura-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}