This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
You’ve probably read a lot about Dolly Parton over the last 24 hours: her songwriting genius, her generosity, her incredible hair. The country icon and philanthropist died Tuesday at age 80 after having cancer. Her hits have been playing in my head ever since.
Parton’s influence extended far beyond her music, though. She was also a singular, centripetal force in American culture — a rare, unifying icon beloved on both the right and the left.
Her ability to project radical kindness without sounding naïve, and to address moral questions without looking partisan, inspired near-universal adoration at a time when Americans can agree on virtually nothing and no one else. And her strategic ambiguity around both her personal life and her political views allowed everyone from Christian conservatives to New York City gays to claim her as their personal representative.
Parton was, as Constance Grady wrote for Vox in 2021, “a secular American saint.” Now it’s hard to think of any living American who might be said to merit that praise. José Andrés? LeVar Burton? Tom Hanks, perhaps…? But they lack the glitter, the candor, the theme park — and the six decades of iconic music.
Core to Parton’s cultural canonization was her incredible generosity, which — on the wide spectrum of celebrity philanthropic giving — was both unusually down-to-earth and apparently, charmingly spontaneous.
“I just give from my heart,” Parton said in her 2022 acceptance speech for the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. “I never know what I’m going to do or why I’m gonna do it. I just see a need and if I can fill it, then I will.”
I asked my colleague Sara Herschander, who has written a lot about philanthropy — including Parton’s! — to characterize how the later icon’s philosophy of giving jibes with norms in the space. As in so much of her life, Parton stands out.
“I think when many celebrities engage in giving, it can feel like a publicity stunt, or like someone swooping in,” Herschander said. “But the way Parton let her childhood and personal connections guide her giving gave hers a unique character and a sense of authenticity and optimism — even as it was also, in many cases, quite effective and ambitious.”
