By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
August 26, 2026
In 2019, The New York Times declared that there was only one thing upon which a deeply divided America could agree.
Dolly Parton.
The hours after Parton’s death demonstrated that statement’s truth. Tributes to her musical genius, her generosity, her kindness, her loyalty to her family and home country, her commitment to literacy and a host of other virtues began flowing forth from every corner of the country as soon as the news of her passing broke.
All the praise was valid.
Parton was a gifted singer and songwriter, a natural and therefore underappreciated actor, an acute and bountiful philanthropist and a savvy, savvy businesswoman. Whatever she chose to do, she did well.
Less attention has been paid to what I think was the source of her greatest strength—her tremendous sense of self-possession.
Dolly Parton knew who she was.
And she knew who she wasn’t.
Lazy analysts call this quality her “authenticity.” She was genuine, they say.
This overlooks the fact that her entire public persona—the outsized blonde wigs, the body squeezed and nipped into an hourglass shape not found in nature, the elaborately made-up face—was an artifice.
A brilliant one.
Many cultural phenomena on her scale—Elvis, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift—struggle to maintain any zone of privacy or sense of self once the tsunami of fame washes over them and their lives.
Parton, though, was able to keep so much—her marriage, her close friendships, etc.—isolated from her public life. She chose what parts of her existence she wanted to share with us, and what parts she wanted to conceal behind an impenetrable curtain.
What was hers alone remained hers alone.
She liked to dismiss her exaggerated appearance as evidence not just that she could take a joke, but that, in fact, she was in on the humor.
“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes,” she famously once said, “because I know I’m not dumb. And I also know that I’m not blonde.”
But the wigs, the high heels and the makeup were more than an elaborate put-on—“a poor person’s idea of glamour,” she said—and evidence that she could be self-deprecating.
They also were an act of misdirection worthy of a great magician.
Absent the big hair, the bright lipstick and the tight bodices, one suspects that she could move through life and the world as she pleased, unrecognized and unbothered.
Dolly Parton, superstar, was a costume she could slip into when she chose to or when she needed to. It was the piece of herself that she could and did share with millions.
The other Dolly Parton was a woman she shared only with the people closest to her—and she guarded that closeness fiercely.
It was this sense of balance that made her so appealing to so many, regardless of where they came from or what paths they walked in life. She could be all accepting, unceasingly generous and endlessly creative because she never let the vortex of mega-stardom pull her off her feet, much less under.
She could be kindest superstar because she was the sanest one.
That is why we loved her.
With almost all other entertainers who achieve fame on her level, there is a backlash to the performer’s outsized success.
People derided Elvis, the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift, begrudging the way their breakthroughs seemed to elevate them above the masses.
Because Dolly made it clear that the persona she presented to her legions of fans was itself a pretense, it was easy for all of us to believe that, in her heart and in her soul, she remained one of us, regardless of how many millions she made and gave away.
And because she defended the rights and dignity of those who often were denied or dispossessed—particularly gay and transgender citizens—without seeming to disparage those eager to deny and dispossess them, she established in her tiny frame one of the last pieces of common ground in our beleaguered country.
That is why her passing hits with such force.
It isn’t just that we’re saying goodbye to a singer, giver and woman we adored.
It’s that we fear that, in this fractured America, we may be saying goodbye to each other, as well.
Dolly Parton is gone.
May she rest in peace.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
