Good Golly Miss Molly!

Hey thaaaaaaaayre darlin', whatcheeeeew up to? It's the wake-up call Texas politicians dread but also secretly relish — the one from columnist Molly Ivins, chief scourge of the good ol' boys (and, lately, a few good ol' girls) in the Texas state legislature and the woman Governor Ann Richards calls ''a Texas treasure.'' In reporting her column for the Dallas Times Herald, Ivins, defender of the people's right to know and the politicians' right to screw up, phones hard-livin' legislators, lobbyists, and fund-raisers at peak hangover hour each morning to dig for dirt (''C'mon, you're making that up''), air her unsolicited opinions (''Give him a gold watch and get him outta there''), or simply regale her captive audience with the latest tasteless lege — short for legislature — joke. On this particular morning, however, Ivins is callin' to commiserate with Richards' former political consultant George Shipley, who claims to have suddenly lost faith in the mechanics of Texas democracy. ''This is Doctor Dirt — the meanest political consultant in the history of the universe,'' Ivins confides, mid-dial, to a visiting reporter. ''Poor George'' — the eyes widen in mock sympathy — ''he's becomin' sooo damned cynical.''

The word cynicism does not rank high in Ivins' spectacularly colorful vocabulary, despite some 20 years of covering the down-and-dirty ''bidness'' of politics for PBS' MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour and a variety of publications, including the Times Herald, The Progressive, The Nation, Ms. magazine, and The Texas Observer. To celebrate her caustic achievements, Random House is publishing her new best-of collection, aptly titled Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? A compilation of political essays on subjects ranging from ethics Texas-style to George Bush and the oil lobby, the book is a testament to its author's enduring faith in the flawed and flagrantly absurd workings of the democratic process. ''Texas politicians aren't crooks,'' Ivins is fond of saying. ''It's just that they have an overdeveloped sense of extenuatin' circumstances.''