CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Down with Idol Worship (Even Dolly Parton)

Dolly Parton seems like she was probably a wonderful person. From what I can tell, she gave books to kids. She’s had some excellent one-liners about social issues like gay marriage. She donated money to vaccine development and cancer research, though only after a personal experience through her niece.

That’s how these things tend to go. Rich people have some kind of experience that’s personally meaningful for them and, as a result, they fund something that technically could benefit us all. And that’s how we come to live in a world driven by the whims of rich people. I don’t like living in this world, even when the rich person is Dolly Parton. When it comes to rendering some kind of judgment on who Parton was as a person, I simply cannot say. And neither can you.

Like you, I’ve never met her, much less spent any real amount of time with her—the kind of time it takes to really know someone; to see her, warts and all, in her toughest times and in her brightest times. The kind of time spent together that’s necessary to even begin to understand the continuous unfolding that is another person and, thus, be able to speak in any real way to who they are.

Yet thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of us have been taking to traditional and social media to mourn the loss of a woman considered to be an icon; to tout the qualities of a person we simply do not know. To worship an idol. I hate to say it, but I gotta say it, so get out your umbrellas because rain is headed for your parade: This kind of glorification of anyone, even Dolly Parton, does us all a disservice by reinforcing a few pretty fucked up things.

First, that getting rich is some kind of worthwhile pursuit. While Parton may have said that being a billionaire is a moral failure, she still........

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