Dolly was a long-time so-called “fag hag,” a female performer with a large number of drag show imitators and was well as gay fans. Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Liza, and Bette Midler also fit that description. Being popular with that group means lots of concert tickets and records sold: such a performer would be stupid to say anything to alienate them, and Dolly Parton was far from stupid. “I have a huge gay following, and I’m proud of them,” she told The New York Times in 2016. “Sometimes some of them look more like me than I do.” Haha! So let me get this straight, you hate Donald Trump too, right?

As the idiocy coming out of the WNBA is putting the “trans-women in women’s sports” cabal on the defensive (where they belong), several of my Facebook friends claimed that Dolly would be pro-Lia Thomas and “chicks-with-dicks” slaughtering genetic women in athletic competitions because she said, “I think everybody should be treated with respect.”

Wow! Dolly really went out on a woke political limb there! Then she said, threading the rhetorical needle on CNN, “I hope that everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are.” Her deft comment on the public restroom issue was also typical Dolly Parton “I just know if I have to pee, I’m gonna pee. I don’t care where it’s gonna be.”

Her real philosophy was “I don’t judge people. I try not to get too caught up in all the controversy of things.”

It was Lie #3 that pushed me over the edge, however, after I read it on three Facebook feeds yesterday in various forms: “Dolly Parton supported the Black Lives Matter movement.” Really? What she said was “Of course black lives matter!”

I know that the Woke and Wonderful have to believe that every human being likely to be admitted on sight through Heaven’s gates passionately agree with them in every respect and on every issue. However, Dolly Parton was popular with virtually everyone and had the professional and financial success she did explicitly because she made the responsible decision never to offend anyone, judge anyone in public, or utter a single word that could reasonably be considered political or social activism. Saying at one point that she believed a woman could make a good President and that she “might” support Hillary Clinton if she ran doesn’t mean she didn’t vote for Donald Trump. The fact that she was hired to write the song “Travelin’ Thru“ for “Transamerica,” the 2005 film about a transgender woman traveling across the country with the son she had only recently learned existed, meant that she would write a custom-made song if you paid her enough. Imagine if she refused to write a theme song for a pro-trans movie! She would have become the new Bigoted Cake Baker. That’s no way to hold on to a fan base.

Dolly Parton earned the right to be remembered exactly as she was: a pure artist-entertainer who carefully crafted a benign and entirely positive public image without ever courting political controversy. She was a responsible celebrity at a time when the breed is as rare as the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Neither Right nor Left has any justification for claiming her as their own.