I have been reading Molly Ivins for about a year now and I am bored. She is the mistress of data snippets and rarely has a solution beyond throwing those rascally Republicans out of office or blaming corporate greed.
I am tired of her rants and raves based on her own skewed viewpoint and partial data. For example, in her Dec. 4 column, she quotes a finding that 24 percent of American workers make less than $8.70 hour. She fails to mention that the study also found that this segment of the workforce consists mainly of those who lack the education required to succeed in higher paying jobs. It is no news to me that the failure of our public education system is producing a workforce that has limited wage and mobility prospects. Instead of addressing or even acknowledging the severity of the horrid state of public education in this country, however, she concludes, as she always does, that greedy corporate America and our national political leaders are to blame. Not one word about the parents, teachers, administrators and local politicians who are responsible for the abysmal performance of many of our public schools year after year after year. Ivins is a one-song act and while that song may be just right for certain occasions, I am getting tired of hearing it every single time the Chicago Tribune gives her the stage. Replace her with a guest columnist who has a better repertoire.
