NONFICTION - Oct. 20, 1991

MOLLY IVINS CAN’T SAY THAT, CAN SHE? by Molly Ivins (Random House: $23; 294 pp.). Political writing in this country, as you may have noticed, is almost unreadable. It’s depressing, formulaic, expedient, often “balanced” into triviality, and though usually fairly accurate, invariably incomplete. So three cheers for Molly Ivins, that rare bird--a journalist who doesn’t bury her sympathies in professional cynicism and regards politics as the real New Vaudeville. “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”--the title refers to a billboard once taken out in support of Ivins by the Dallas Times Herald, where she is a columnist--consists of 50-odd essays and articles written over the last two decades, but much here will be new even to Ivins’ fans; although she also writes for publications such as TV Guide and Ms., some of her best work appears in the Progressive, the Nation, and the Washington Journalism Review. Ivins is H. L. Mencken without the cruelty, Will Rogers with an agenda, and should never have been fired from the New York Times (so she says) for calling a chicken-killing festival “a gang-pluck.”