Behind her goodness and charm was a master of media and politics
Dolly Parton might have been apolitical, but she had what it takes to be a great politician.
You have to be good on TV. You have to know how to talk on your feet. You have to know where your voters are and how to lead them where you want them to go. Entertainment and politics do overlap, but skill in the former does not spell success in the latter. Ask Jelly Roll, who has managed to piss off the entire country this year.
The greatest politicians know how to be everything to everyone—or at least enough people to win—without compromising their authenticity. Whether you have it is morally neutral. Barack Obama and Donald Trump* both have it, and so did Dolly. In a timeline where she decided to pursue politics early in life, President Parton could have kicked both their asses. There’s evidence for this too—polls have her net favorability at 65 percent, higher than any president.
What set her apart is that she always spoke from a moral center. To endorse a policy, person or party, for Dolly, would have meant speaking in a lower register. Take one of her many statements on LGBTQ+ acceptance: “If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are.”
Sounds simple! But if you take those words seriously, marriage rights and nondiscrimination are the logical conclusion. And yet! Here’s Megan Basham from The Daily Wire:
“Even her famed LGBTQ comments were for the most part fairly general. They will say she spoke out on the North Carolina bathroom bill. No, she didn’t. She was asked about it and pressed to make a statement when other stars like Bruce Springsteen and Bette Midler were.”
Megan Basham from The Daily Wire
Basham is influential among conservative Christians. She mourned Dolly by spiraling on X through all the ways Dolly must have secretly aligned with conservatives. The posts were pure cope, but could it have all been Dolly’s design? Dolly knew how to speak truthfully, while keeping conservatives in the fan base. Politicians call that coalition management.
Of course, for Dolly, it was bigger than that. Her magic let us all see a part of ourselves in her. I can’t blame Basham for clinging to her love for Dolly, even if she’s wrong. Who would want to lose Dolly over politics? You never had to. Consider all the beliefs and labels that emerge from her life, whether stated by her or perceived by others:
A liberal.
A progressive.
A capitalist.
A gentrifier.
A working-class hero.
A feminist.
A pro-lifer.
A devout Christian.
An outlaw Christian.
A lukewarm Christian burning in hell.
Lesser politicians try to be everything to everyone and fail. They’re called flip-floppers, weaklings, liars. Dolly did it differently—building trust and leading with values. You could feel, too, if you disagreed with her, you were still loved. She demonstrated a belief in a plural America, where there was room for everyone in a real way.
We don’t actually know if she read John Rawls, but That’s Y made a great connection between Dolly and what the liberal philosopher called “overlapping consensus” that’s worth quoting:
“When Dolly stood for vaccines or for gay equality, she didn’t make it a left-wing or a right-wing act. She made issues feel like simple human decency, above politics. By virtue of being so fiercely nonpartisan, she kept those things inside the American mainstream in times of intense polarization. What it still means to be a society, together. It helps what the Greek calls polis: the shared, coherent, society. That’s how very political Dolly was to America. She protected the polis. In Dolly Parton, American lost one of the last people almost everyone could still agree on, and who served as a reference for what we could still agree on.”
Call it the Dolly Consensus, with overlap in all directions. In interviews, she said she let people underestimate her in business, and I think she did something like that politically, too. She lead with goodness and charm, but there was a political mastermind behind it all.
We owe her a lot, and we might owe it to her to try to be a little better. Do I really need every celebrity, friend and politician to speak up and agree with me all the time? Maybe there’s a better way to give one another room to breathe, and fall back to simple, shared values. Very, very few politicians deserve that much trust, but a lot of people do. I think Dolly would want us to try.
