It’s virtually impossible to find anything negative about Dolly Parton, the superstar entertainer who passed away this week.
That kind of clean record is hard enough for anyone, let alone a highly successful American icon who has been in the public eye for more than half a century.
As Tyler Parker wrote on The Ringer:
“Her talent is staggering. Her résumé’s nuts. Impossible to do it justice. Eleven Grammys, six Golden Globe nominations, three Emmys. Twenty-five no. 1s on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, the most ever by a woman. She had 49 top 10 country albums. No other woman has done that. She’s sold more than a hundred million records. Her trophy case includes a National Medal of Arts, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and a Kennedy Center Honor. She even had her own top 10 list.”
And yet, not one blemish to her reputation.
How did she do it?
I saw two clips on Youtube that suggest an answer.
One was her appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when her charms were on full display. Instead of plugging a new movie or album, she picks up a guitar and performs a humorous song of gratitude for Carson (“I never really made it till the Johnny Carson show”). If you have to pick one clip to show why Parton was so beloved, for my money that would be it.
The second clip is an interview on ABC, when an interviewer tried to goad her into criticizing Donald Trump.
“I have a lot of fans out there, and I don’t want to offend anybody,” Parton said.
When the interviewer drew a parallel between Trump and the sexually abusive boss in Parton’s 1980 film “9 to 5,” she refused to bite.
“I’m not addressing that,” she said. “I learned a long time ago, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay in show business. … I’m not in politics, I’m an entertainer.”
The interviewer pointed out that Parton was also a role model. “Yes I am,” she replied. “That’s why I don’t talk about people.”
At that point, I thought, she could well have been a rabbi delivering a Rosh Hashanah sermon on the ills of gossip.
But Parton was no spiritual leader. She was a talented entertainer who married sweetness, generosity and common sense in huge doses.
Actor Mark Ruffalo is also a talented entertainer, but one afflicted with Israel Derangement Syndrome.
He’s taken a lot of heat lately because he couldn’t resist connecting his critique of a media merger with his animosity toward Israel. It didn’t matter that it was a blatant stretch that echoed antisemitic tropes. He couldn’t help himself.
So now, instead of people talking about his acting chops, they’re talking about his obsession with the world’s only Jewish state.
Ruffalo used his freedom of speech to say whatever he wanted; and his critics are using their freedom of speech to rake him over the coals.
Parton took a broad view of free speech.
“Like God gave us free will,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY, “America gave us free speech, but you’ve got to be responsible for anything you say and do.”
Ah yes, responsibility.
Self-righteous stars like Ruffalo convince themselves it’s their “responsibility” to take a side on a complicated conflict halfway around the world; while humble stars like Parton prefer to focus on their responsibility to share what they’re good at.
That humility and decency have no doubt contributed to the tributes to Parton coming from all over the country– regardless of class, race, gender, politics or any of the tribal affiliations that divide us.
Perhaps this is a tribute to America itself.
It suggests that, unlike the ugly divisions we see on social media that drown us in cynicism, there is an America outside our digital universe that values the innocence of a Dolly Parton who can bring our nation together.
“The goodness of America is plentiful and has not stopped revealing itself,” Abe Greenwald of Commentary wrote this week. “We see it in the very outpouring of love for Dolly Parton and what she means. That we seem to mourn her America en masse is itself an encouraging sign of that America’s continued survival.”
What a welcomed legacy: Instead of the arrogance of cynicism, Parton embodied the innocence of humility.
We could all use some of that humility.
We could all try to channel our inner Dolly Parton– yes, even Mark Ruffalo.
