How does she do it? It’s a version of the question everyone in show business is asking all the time: How do we stay popular in a fractious country? How can you keep packing them in like Dolly when the culture itself seems so bitter and divided?
For one thing, she resists labels. When the podcast producers cheerfully suggest that she’s a “feminist,” Dolly hesitates. She doesn’t like that word and wouldn’t use it to describe herself. This reaction sends the producers into a deeply confused state. They love Dolly and they love feminism, so by the Transitive Property of Politically Aligned Entertainment, Dolly must also love feminism. An entire episode ensues wherein the producers—who are genial and thoughtful and utterly ingenuous—interview as many women as they can who identify as feminists and Dolly fans, and then they present this evidence to Dolly as if to say, See? You’re a feminist!
Dolly laughs and sighs. Okay, she says, I guess if it’s that important to you, maybe I am. But you can hear the half-hearted tone in her voice. Dolly refuses to be claimed….At the 2017 Emmy Awards, Dolly was reunited with her co-stars from the 1980 hit comedy “Nine to Five.” It was nine months into the Trump administration, and two of the presenters weren’t about to let you forget it. Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda let loose mini-screeds against Trump. Dolly looks uncomfortable, then defuses the awkwardness by making a joke about the size of her breasts. And the podcasters want to know—they need to know—why Dolly didn’t attack Trump along with her co-stars and friends. Doesn’t she hate the guy? (Translation: Please tell us you hate the guy!) For the first time in the podcast, Dolly seems confused. She doesn’t hate Donald Trump. She prays for Donald Trump.
And if the podcast producers thought they were frustrated by her refusal to be a feminist or an LGBTQ activist, they’re stopped cold by this admission. Dolly prays for Trump, by which she means, she’s not praying that he wins reelection or lowers his handicap. She prays that God will grant him wisdom and foresight and guide him as he leads the nation. Praying for the president—any president, every president—is actually part of the official liturgy of the Episcopalian church. But this is problematic for Dolly’s interviewers, for whom basic religious faith seems weird and baffling. They keep asking How does she do it? And she keeps answering them By writing songs that are emotionally true and not being a political activist and praying for God’s guidance. And they just don’t hear it. Can’t be that. Gotta be something else.
Ethics Alarms has many essays about unethical celebrities who feel their fame and popularity gives them leave to use an outsized metaphorical megaphone to broadcast obnoxious, ignorant, divisive opinions and assertions that should have no more credibility than rants from the drunk at the end of the bar. When I saw the Babylon Bee gag above, I was troubled by its perceptiveness. Are there any universally beloved human beings now?
I don’t know, and neither do you, how genuinely virtuous Dolly Parton was, and from the standpoint of celebrity ethics, it doesn’t matter. My friend Robert McElwaine was Danny Kaye’s publicist and manager for decades, and he told me that the performer literally wasn’t allowed to make any public statement that Bob hadn’t scripted or approved in advance. In reality, Danny Kaye was virtually the opposite of his public persona, which was seen as loving and benign, a champion of children and a passionate missionary for the power of laughter. The lesson is that celebrities have a duty to give the rest of us something to cheer for, to admire, to emulate.
Baseball guru Bill James, most often evoked on EA for his concept of “signature significance,” also has argued persuasively about the duty of sports celebrities to project ethical virtues in their public and their private conduct that doesn’t remain private. “They are paid heroes,” he has written. “Being public heroes is their job.” Sports heroes, however, have limited influence because so many people pay no attention to sports despite their cultural power and influence.
Dolly’s death raises the disturbing question of whether there are any universally beloved human beings today, and if being universally beloved in the United States is even possible. “Paid heroes” are important to societal ethics, cohesion, comity and peace. Being on that pedestal is perilous; look no farther than another show business icon who not too long ago would have attracted the same intensity of accolades with his passing as Parton: Bill Cosby.
We need celebrities who remind us to be good, ethical, and nice. If Dolly was the last of the breed, American society is in deep trouble.
But I guess we already knew that.
Ethics Alarms 
Not that I’ve given it much thought, but I’d say Dolly Parton embodied “the girl next door.” And she was good at it.
I don’t know if it’s telling about the progressive psychology but 76-90% of the progressives I know on various social media platforms are swooping in frantically to claim Dolly Parton as their own.
I wonder how they propose to do that. Country music, a traditional conservative community. A Southerner. An openly religious woman. Is the theory that her role in “9 to 5” about a sexist boss getting his just deserts makes her a feminist? Mighty thin…
I don’t think they concern themselves with a justifiable “how”. They just do it. As they are just doing it now.
Obviously this is my opinion, but Dolly Parton was, first and foremost, a business woman (and a VERY astute one), and her entire business played on her roots as one of a dozen children born in backwoods Tennessee. And unlike so many people who become superstars, she never let fame get in the way of that business. She didn’t seem to be obsessed with the notion that her opinions about socio-political matters mattered one whit when compared with the success of her business.
She maintained a simple, humorous, self-deprecating, not-above-her-raising persona. As you noted, she steadfastly refused to get involved in political debate. On social issues, she offered the barest of sentiments, and talked about her religious views sparingly. She knew taking sides on hot-button topics was fraught with peril, and generally bad for business.
She was a small-town country singer who struck gold with her writing talents and steadfastly refused to sell any material from her written library. Famously, Elvis Presley’s management approach Dolly with a request to record “I Will Always Love You”. When Dolly said yes, the manager added, “Well, Elvis has a desire to own the rights to anything he records…are you prepared to relinquish the song to him?” At that point, Dolly rejected the offer. Two decades later, Whitney Houston covered the song, and Dolly pocketed a pile of gold that would make Smaug jealous.
She was universally loved because she refused to do the one thing that businesses like the recently-mentioned Target, Annheuser-Busch, Gillette, and far too many contemporaries of hers did: believe that her brand could survive her taking sides on issues that divided the population in half.
Well, that was a bit scattered, but sometimes my thoughts are random.
Great comments.
There’s just something about her … the smart, bodacious, lovely girl next door, so nice you can’t be jealous, the sort of woman who’d help you in any pinch, give you the shirt off her back. And her nearly six decades marriage to the same man – inspirational. She truly was America’s Sweetheart.
An excellent summation!!
Dolly will be missed.
I’ve never been a huge fan of her style of music but it has its unique niche in my massive playlist, that said…
In my opinion; Dolly Parton was 100% true to her roots and it appears that part of that was fully employing the Golden Rule in all aspects of her life. It appears to me that by all measures, both personally and publicly, Dolly was absolutely genuine in that what you see and hear is true to her core. I’d be so bold to say that, Dolly likely didn’t have a public dark side to her character, I suppose it’s entirely possible that she had no dark side at all.
If there were more people like Dolly in this world, the world would be a far better place.
I really admire Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton is respected because she earned it. She also gave back in spades to her community she came from. She has a free book program for children, there’s simply nothing but kindness to her public persona. She was savvy enough to avoid all the pitfalls for decades, and I respect her immensely for that. Very few people are savvy enough to avoid public “gotcha” traps, but she did it over and over again, and it wasn’t even obvious.