It’s occurred to me that Dolly
Parton and JD Vance represent the spectrum of what comes from Appalachia. So—a couple
of thoughts.
I mean—it’s interesting that
they both came from families in grinding poverty; Dolly in Tennessee and Shady
in Ohio and maybe Kentucky. (I frankly can’t be arsed to research. His parents
were in Ohio, but he spent time with his grandparents in Kentucky, I think.) Hers
was a loving, happy family, while his appears to have been dysfunctional.
Something about drugs, I dunno. Maybe that accounts for the contrast in
strength of character?
Because Dolly’s life of grace,
generosity, acceptance and joy was built on a core of integrity, honesty and an
abiding sense of fairness, while Vance is a grifting, lying, shapeshifting
opportunist, eager to latch on to anyone and any ideology that he thinks will
advance his personal goals. (Which I think revolve around acquiring wealth and
power.)
They both made their
Appalachian heritage focal points of their careers. Dolly captured universal truths
couched in images of the mountains in the more than 3000 songs she wrote in her
lifetime. She never exploited her subjects in the process, though. Couch Boy shat
on the people he grew up with in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, to both
make a buck and declare his superiority.
Shall we speak of charity? Compare
the millions that Dolly’s contributed to her community and the world—seeing a
need and stepping up to meet it, from early childhood literacy to medical
research—with…uh…yeah, I got nothin’. His charity is mostly self-directed,
which is truly on brand.
As for faith, Dolly lived hers
in her actions with consistency and humility. JD journeyed from evangelicalism
to atheism to a form of Catholicism that somehow gives him the unmitigated gall
to instruct the Pope on theology. His new opus, delving into his spiritual path is more of the same Elegy performative exceptionalism, for which he has used his office as the vice president to promote sales. The cover of the book features a very picturesque country church; a Methodist church, into which he has never set foot. Also, I believe, like the grandees of the 17th
Century, Mr. Late-life Convert prefers to have Mass said in a private setting
in his official quarters, rather than mix with the plebs in the local parish. (Okay—TBF,
the folks at Saint Thomas the Apostle lucked out in this regard.)
Someone whose blog I support last
week said he was going to church to pray for the repose of Dolly’s soul. I
thought, well, okaybut—I cannot imagine anyone leaving this life with any more
certainty of the welcome she’ll receive in the next than Dolly Parton. By any
measure, her soul is guaranteed to rest easy.
Yes, of course—my gratitude
for today (and the year) is for the life of Dolly Parton. The
singer-songwriter-actress-philanthropist-entrepreneur-humanitarian died last
week at age 80, but her legacy—no, legacies—of love, generosity, acceptance, joy,
fairness and (of course) music are going to live for the ages.
I titled this post “Cup of
ambition” (from her hit “9 to 5”) because Dolly was supremely ambitious. She left
her home and family the day after she graduated from high school, taking the
bus to Nashville because she was determined to turn her musical talent into a
successful career. IMO she was definitely not running away—hers was a
loving and happy family, albeit abjectly poor—but running to something: stardom. She knew she
had it in her at age 17.
Four years later, she joined country
star Porter Wagoner’s television show, where that quality became evident to
everyone who saw her, even the people who resented her replacing a beloved
fixture of the show. She stayed through her five year contract with Wagoner, and
two years beyond; then left to go out on her own.
Wagoner, who’d come to resent the
attention Dolly was getting nonetheless sued her (in 1979) for breach of
contract, demanding $3M and 15% of royalties from the songs she wrote and
performed. Eventually Dolly settled for $1M, which took her years to pay off.
But she never said anything negative about Wagoner.
And no one ever got a
percentage of her royalties. When Elvis Presley inquired about recording “I
Will Always Love You” he demanded 50% of the publishing rights (as was his
custom). Dolly said no—in the nicest possible way. It was a difficult decision,
because: Elvis. But that cup of ambition came with very clear ideas about
boundaries, acknowledgement and fiscal canniness.
It also came with a firm sense
of self. Early on, she developed the persona of the big-haired blonde who put
her makeup on with a trowel, could make music with her acrylic nails and let
her chest precede her into any room. She liked that image, so she kept it her
entire life. Anyone who tried to take her down discovered that she was way
ahead of them with the jokes. One of my favorite lines was “It costs a lot of
money to look this cheap.”
She may have looked cheap, but
she was all class.
Along with accepting herself,
she took others as they came. Race, religion, country of origin, sexual
orientation, gender, level of education—we’re all God’s children, she said. If
God was happy with his creation, she wasn’t the person to quibble. She particularly
enjoyed drag queens, many of whom model themselves after her; she sent gifts of
support to at least one of them who ran afoul of Texas law.
Speaking of which—it was kind
of divinely ironic that on the day of Dolly’s death, 25 August, a federal judge
in Texas struck down a 2023 law banning “sexually oriented performances”. In
his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Hittner cited Dolly’s exuberant persona
and told the pearl clutchers that if they were offended by this kind of thing, “just
don’t go.”
Dolly’s career was enormously
successful. Her financial assets were estimated in the hundreds of millions. And
she used that money to do so much good. She built Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon
Forge, Tenn., the largest employer in that county. All employees—full-time and
part—are eligible for full tuition at Tennessee universities and receive health
insurance, paid time off and child care.
When Whitney Houston’s cover
of “I Will Always Love You” rebooted millions in royalties, Dolly invested that
money in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, turning a down-at-the-heels area
into her recording studio and kick-starting further investment.
Her friendship with a medical
researcher at Vanderbilt University led to her contributing $1M for research
into the mRNA vaccine that was developed by Moderna into the Covid vaccine
received by tens of millions of people around the world during the pandemic.
She also had a video made of her receiving the vaccine early on, encouraging
people to do the same by repurposing her early hit “Jolene”.
More than 30 years ago, she
started Imagination Library, a program that sent a book a month, from birth to
entry into kindergarten, to children in Sevier County, Tenn. Eventually, she expanded
the program to all of Tennessee, then the US, and now Canada, Britain and
Australia. For blind children, the books are in Braille.
Imagination Library does rely
on partnerships with government, and Republicans in Indiana and Missouri
recently cut a combined $10 in funds to the program, even as they all tweeted
their condolences at her death. That is, after all, how they roll.
Which reminds me: I was
expecting something typically crass and self-aggrandizing from the Kleptocrat.
(Remember how he responded to Aretha Franklin’s death? “She used to work for
me.”) I was surprised at the measured reaction, although I didn’t rule out the
probability that someone whomped him with a stun gun and prized the phone from
La Harp’s claws to send that tweet. And, of course, a couple of days later he
tweeted out an AI slop image of Dolly and him at the White House. I’m not
linking to it, but it shows him with his tiny hands in his coat pockets and
Dolly reaching through to hold his arm, as though 1)she’d ever be seen in his
company; or 2)she’d be the supplicant. Asshole.
(Not that Dolly would ever
call him that. She was pretty scrupulous in her non-partisanship. She just did
what was right and kept moving.)
Dolly showed us that a fundamentalist can live the spirit of Christ, and that you can be highly ambitious without also being a prick.
As you can tell—I’ve been
letting the spirit of Dolly Parton infuse my thoughts this past week. She set
such an example of strength, focus, happiness and welcoming; it makes me smile
even as I type these words. That woman was born with a joyful heart and she was
a goddamn national treasure.
I’ll leave you with a clip
from Designing Women, the late-20th Century sitcom set in an
interior design company in Atlanta. Charlene, about to give birth to her first
child, is overjoyed to find that Dolly Parton has entered her dream. Dolly
insists that she's not an angel, but spoiler alert: later in the episode, she
returns as an angel to escort an elderly Black woman, played by Bea Richards,
to heaven.
Well, we knew she was an angel
all along, didn’t we?
