“America needs Dolly Parton right now” - “under the weather” country great lauded as antidote to U.S. division
This week, Parton’s sister caused panic over the singer’s health - leading Dolly herself to declare: “I ain’t dead yet!”
Country legend Dolly Parton has been described as “the one thing Americans agree on”, after her sister this week sparked brief panic about the 79-year-old’s health.
“Example of how we can all be better”
Writing in USA Today on Thursday, the award-winning columnist Amelia Robinson said of the 11-time Grammy winner: “America needs Dolly Parton right now.”
“At 79, she’s a boss lady who gives back to the world through her talent and her acclaimed charitable work,” Robinson said, declaring that Parton “deserves sainthood” for her Imagination Library program alone.
One of a number of philanthropic projects carried out by Parton’s Dollywood Foundation, the Imagination Library has, since its inception in 1995, mailed more than 200 million free books to young children in the U.S. and overseas.
As polls show that Americans believe the U.S. is now irretrievably divided - 64% of respondents offered this opinion in a recent New York Times/Siena survey - Robinson pointed to Parton as “an example of how we can all be better”.
Parton is “a reminder that, despite the nonsense and the political warfare that has Americans distrusting Americans, we aren’t all that different, and can find common ground”, Robinson wrote.
“I am Black and was born poor in a big Ohio city. I love a scrappy, campy White artist born decades earlier, and raised in a two-room log cabin in impoverished Tennessee.”
“Do I look sick to you?!”
A performer best known for hit singles such as “9 to 5” and “Jolene”, Parton this week sought to reassure fans over her health, declaring in a social-media video message on Wednesday: “I ain’t dead yet!”
This came a day after Parton’s sister Freida had caused widespread alarm over the singer’s well-being, posting a Facebook message that asked “all of the world that loves her to be prayer warriors and pray with me”.
Freida then clarified her comments in a later post, writing: “I didn’t mean to scare anyone or make it sound so serious when asking for prayers for Dolly. She’s been a little under the weather, and I simply asked for prayers because I believe so strongly in the power of prayer.”
In her video message, Parton acknowledged that she has been experiencing some health “problems” - issues she had already made public late last month - but insisted they are “nothing major”.
“Lately, everybody thinks that I’m sicker than I am,” the Tennessean said. “Do I look sick to you?! I’m working hard here.”
She continued: “I appreciate your prayers, because I’m a person of faith and I can always use the prayers for anything and everything. But I want you to know that I’m OK.”
“I want to be at my best for you”
On September 28, Parton announced that she is postponing a series of concerts in Las Vegas, originally scheduled to take place in December this year, due to “some health challenges”.
“My doctors tell me that I must have a few procedures,” said Parton, who has not disclosed the exact nature of her health problems. “As I joked with them, it must be time for my 100,000-mile check-up, although it’s not the usual trip to see my plastic surgeon!
“In all seriousness, given this, I am not going to be able to rehearse and put together the show that I want you to see, and the show that you deserve to see. You pay good money to see me perform, and I want to be at my best for you.”
She added: “I just need a little time to get show ready, as they say. And don’t worry about me quittin’ the business because God hasn’t said anything about stopping yet.”
“I let a lot of things go”
In March this year, Parton announced the death of her husband of nearly six decades, Carl Dean, at the age of 82.
In her video statement this week, Parton revealed that she had overlooked her own physical well-being amid Dean’s poor health in the period before he died.
“I didn’t take care of myself so I let a lot of things go that I should have been taking care of,” she said. “When I got around to it, the doctors said: ‘We need to take care of this, we need to take care of that.’”
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