I posted this as a podcast so that I could re-up an interview I did last year with Martha Ackman, Dolly Parton’s biographer. You can read the show notes here, and purchase Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton (St. Martin’s Press, 2025) here. Left to right: Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, and Smokey Robinson in the East Room of the White House after accepting honors from the Kennedy Center, December 3, 2006. Image credit: The Eric Draper/Wikimedia Commons Years from now, people will ask each other: Where were you when you found out that Dolly Parton died? And we will all remember. I was on the beach: I was shocked, but not shocked; everyone knew that she hadn’t been well, but people who are 80 also have chronic medical issues that recede for long periods of time. It wasn’t inconceivable, as recently as last week, when Dolly canceled an appearance at Dollywood, that she would be back, as she said, to do all the work she had yet to do. On Instagram, she looked beautiful as always, with her warm reassuring smile and perfect makeup. It seems that Dolly just didn’t want us to fret about things we couldn’t do anything about. The family has confirmed that Dolly died of cancer after a recent diagnosis. But in the 18 months since her husband, Carl Dean, passed after a years-long struggle with Alzheimer’s, it was clear that Dolly was not herself. It was unsurprising that, after a lifetime of carefully shielding her personal privacy, that Dolly did not exactly say what was wrong: most recently, she had gestured to dehydration and digestive issues. But in December 2025, she postponed a month-long residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, rescheduling it for September 2026. Dolly was last seen on June 24, at the grand opening of Dolly Parton’s Tennessean Travel Stop truck stop but did not perform. Now she is gone. I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t start crying until I came home and told my wife; then, I teared up off and on all evening as I read the tributes and played the YouTube videos and reels proliferating across social media. Let me say that as an older person, this kind of grief plays differently: in the last third of one’s life, there is no replacing the icons that were the wallpaper of one’s youth. When Dionne Warwick dies, as inevitably she will, I won’t be able to muster a similar commitment to Cardi B; nor will there ever be a song like “Walk On By” that returns me to a moment when it seemed like romance could be just around the corner. Like only a few other figures—Elvis and Aretha come to mind—Dolly earned universal appeal. Unlike those two other figures, she appeared to live her life without a whiff of scandal. Elvis, for example, was a generally weird person. It’s not just that he began courting his first wife when he was 24 and she was 14, it’s that he had a range of personal tics and fetishes, from pharmaceutical abuse to guns to having girls and women delivered to him wearing little girl panties, that coexisted alongside the conservative, law-and-order persona that endeared him to Richard Nixon. Differently, Aretha Franklin was not weird, but her musical brilliance competed with constant acts of overcoming that are typical of celebrity: sexual abuse and teenage motherhood, domestic violence, and the occasional run-in with the law. The closest Dolly ever came to controversy were the rumors that she was a lesbian. They were fed in part by her childlessness, but also by her husband Carl Dean’s refusal to be a public person. What few seemed to grasp was that Dolly and Carl’s long marriage, much like the decades-long partnership between Loretta Lynn and her husband Oliver (known as Doolittle, Doo or Mooney), may have exactly depended on allowing the non-performing, male, partner to have his own life. In turn, marriage became a private space where these women could rest, retreat, take off the wigs and the sequins, and just be themselves. Carl’s apparent absence, and the fact that Dolly took on a childhood friend (who served two stints in the military and never married) as her traveling companion and body woman fed rumors about her sexuality. Yet, instead of running from them, Dolly staked a part of her reputation on defending the LGBT community—not as a political cause, but as if to do this were only a common-sense act of kindness and decency. In a day and age when sexual and gender identity have become ugly fodder for conservative activism, Dolly created a cultural space where LGBTQ people could feel welcomed and at home. The fact that she did this took courage: it also speaks to her economic power and influence in a genre heavily dominated by bro culture. Country music has always been a somewhat conservative industry, one inflected with a form of Protestant Christianity that is, at best, generally capable of tolerance and studied ignorance about non-heteronormative sexualities. In that context, it was a big deal that Dolly made a point of being not just accepting, but loving, and—without identifying them—made a point of saying that she had LGBT people in her family (like everyone else does!) But Dolly also got away with taking this stand because she was very careful about sharing her opinions as if everyone wanted to know them. In addition, as Russell Moore pointed out in Christianity Today, Dolly responded to insults and objectification with pointed humor that always made her attacker look mean and small. “That was more than just good media training,” Moore writes. “Parton showed she was more cunning than those who looked down on her: She didn’t seem the least bit offended by the questions, nor did she seem to be the least bit shaken in who she was.” This became a valuable skill as social media became an unregulated technology for spreading bad takes and ugly information. Dolly is also one of the few celebrities who managed to simultaneously rise above politics and be on the right side of things: she was, for example, a staunch union woman, not just someone who played an exploited worker in the movie 9 to 5 (1980). But Dolly avoided partisanship, something that in retrospect, perhaps we should all have done. The closest she ever came to endorsing a candidate was in 2016, when Dolly told the New York Times that if the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton it “would be wonderful. Hillary might make as good a president as anybody ever has.” Then, she delivered a prediction that was shockingly accurate. “I think no matter if it’s Hillary or Donald Trump, we’re gonna be plagued with PMS either way—presidential mood swings!” she said. “But I personally think a woman would do a great job. I think Hillary’s very qualified. So, if she gets it, I’ll certainly be behind her.” And yes, of course Dolly was a feminist. She was not beyond reproach, I am sure. But if you were going to reproach her, you better watch out. Two years ago, I was in Nashville when conservative blogger Ericka Anderson accused Dolly of supporting sin with her pro-LGBTQ views. “To be sure,” Anderson wrote, “the culture is on a constant witch hunt for those who would call homosexuality sinful. I understand wanting to avoid the avalanche of criticism, but calling sin out by name isn’t judgment. It’s adhering to Scripture. Parton had no problem identifying another kind of sin, saying, “Judging [others] is just as bad as any other sin.” I guess she’s a “good enough” Christian to call that one out. Furthermore, it’s illogical to avoid taking a stand on something simply because of imperfection or human nature. If this were the case, we couldn’t call anything wrong. Anderson did not avoid an avalanche of criticism. As I walked around Country Music Fest, Nashville’s annual tribute to itself, chalking, tee shirts, and rainbow bracelets all sent the same message: WWDD, or “what would Dolly do?” (For those unacquainted with popular Christianity, this is a play on the phrase: What would Jesus do?”) More pointedly was a fan comment, since expunged from the site, but memorialized on a gay journalism site, “You do not come after Dolly Parton. You absolutely do not.” Anderson had to apologize for the piece, becoming perhaps the only conservative in recent years who has done this. The fact that even Donald Trump, who has something nasty to say about everyone, has ordered flags to half-mast without a whimper, or a single reference to the fact that she twice found reasons to decline the Medal of Freedom from him, speaks volumes. As Spencer Kornhaber noted at The Atlantic, Dolly Parton was the ultimate franchise, “an idea that everyone could benefit from.” That’s true. But her superpower, and what she exemplified, was fairness, something we could use more of in a world awash with inequities, both real and imagined. She didn’t love indiscriminately, as many celebrities appear to do; she treated others with love, and that is a huge difference. She modeled what it meant to be both wildly successful, and to use her influence and fortune to be of service to others. It’s what we want from our leaders, and almost never get. But Dolly would tell us not to give up hoping. What I’m watching: Image courtesy of Apple TV “Shrinking” (Apple TV, 3 seasons) is a dramadey (yes, I used that word) about a therapist (Jason Segal) who is finding his way back to friendship and connection after his wife’s sudden death. Unlike most therapists, however, he has an actual workplace: Harrison Ford and comedian Jessica Williams are his co-workers, and the cast is sprinkled with terrific secondary characters. Christa Miller, who you may remember from “Scrubs”(2001-2008) plays a neighbor with no boundaries—but in fact, no one in this show has boundaries, which is why it is hilarious that the main characters are therapists. The scripts are snappy, the characters are believable—and yeah, three seasons! Short takes: * Was General Randy
