Dolly Parton spent sixty years refusing to tell her fans how to vote. Her sister Stella spent the week of Dolly’s death calling President Trump “deranged,” “evil,” and a “pimple in the White House,” even as American flags were lowered in her sister’s honor.
Dolly died on Tuesday, August 25, at age 80 after a battle with cancer. Within hours, President Trump praised her as one of the greatest country singers ever and ordered flags across the country flown at half-staff for a full week—one of the longest periods of national mourning ever granted a private citizen.
That same week Stella posted a series of attacks on X, calling Trump “gross and pathetic,” comparing him to Hitler and Netanyahu, and claiming Americans felt threatened by him and his allies. Several posts were later deleted. This was nothing new: she had previously warned of “Marshall Law,” told regretful Trump voters to “STFU,” and repeatedly likened him to history’s worst figures.
Dolly never spoke that way. She repeatedly said she stayed out of politics because she had fans on both sides. She turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom three times—twice from Trump and once from Biden—rather than appear to pick a side.
Instead of politics, Dolly built. She created the Imagination Library so children would not grow up unable to read as her father had. She sang about family, faith, and ordinary people, making listeners of every background feel she was singing to them.
There is a clear lesson in the contrast. Grace reaches farther than rage. The best way to honor Dolly is to love family, read to a child, keep politics in their place, and remember which sister the country is mourning. Rest in peace, Dolly.