“Whatever phantasmagorical thing a Real American might be, there has never been one realer” than Dolly Parton, said Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker. A self-made millionaire who was born in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains, the beloved singer-songwriter and philanthropist, who died Aug. 25 at 80, “embodied our national ideal of authenticity.” She was even authentic in her embrace of artifice—“the wigs, the eyelashes, the boob jobs”—quipping, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Then there was her music. She connected with Americans of all ages, races, and classes with songs of “hope, home, and hardscrabble happiness,” whether recalling a jacket her mother stitched from rags on “Coat of Many Colors” or mourning a romance on “I Will Always Love You.” Parton was often called the Queen of Country Music, but there was nothing monarchical about her. She was “democratic to her bones, of the people and by the people and for the people, the duly elected President of the United States of Americans.”
Parton was “the one person who could unite a deeply divided country,” said Zachary B. Wolf in CNN.com. She embraced her LGBTQ fans and penned the feminist anthem “9 to 5” but wouldn’t call herself a feminist, preferring “woman in business.” She dismissed herself as a Jezebel but openly discussed her Christian faith. Her mourners ranged from President Trump, who lowered flags to half-staff in her honor, to the Democratic Socialists of America, who declared her a working-class hero. She maintained “professional political agnosticism,” always deflecting with a “plain-spoken Dollyism” that entertained all sides. No one was surprised when she was ranked the most popular public figure in April, with a net favorability of plus 65, 51 points ahead of her closest competitor, former president Barack Obama.
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