I’m not gonna be one of those people who pretended to listen to Dolly Parton all along. She had plenty of fans of her music and I won’t pose as one of them. That being said, I was a huge fan of her.
She’s talked about her father’s illiteracy and in her fame started the Imagination Library as a result—an institution which has given kids worldwide over three hundred million books for free. It’s just a part of her extensive philanthropy—giving away so much money that, though she could have been a billionaire, she never reached that mark.
It’s rare to have a public figure in America almost always walk the walk without talking too much talk—but when she did speak about issues, it was always in a way that expressed a kind of belief in the human spirit and the understanding that we’re all just equal as human beings. Though her works that help people will be recognized and missed, to me it’s that she represented a quality of understanding and respect for all that is largely lost on those with power and influence in media and culture.
In an era of Kardashians, where amassing wealth and dismissing others and focusing on the self is paramount—embracing individualism and greed—Parton represented the polar opposite. She was an example that one could be both accomplished, loved, and rich without holding on to ideas that were exclusionary or discriminatory. If celebrity is an inescapable consequence of the collision of art and commerce, Dolly was an example that the role could be a path to mutual benefit (as much as something like that can be).
I think that’s the reason so many people are fucked up over her death. In a time when nobody agrees on anything, everyone knows that Dolly Parton was an amazing person. A representation of goodness, of what people could be. There’s something in the air now where we can all tell society has sunk so far into greed, selfishness, and sometimes outright evil, that we’re collectively losing the plot—that there aren’t really many people left to consider a role model for the next generation.
She will be missed, and perhaps her legacy will inspire the youth of today to see that society does recognize the good in people, and collectively lifts them up, giving them deserved recognition for being a beacon of what the human heart is capable of. The world will be a worse place without Dolly, but maybe because of her, people will end up a little better.
