Like many of this fantastic publication’s erudite and discerning readers, I consider myself a Memphian, not a Tennessean. That is, at least, until Dolly Parton enters the chat. Famed country music singer/songwriter, businesswoman, film star, and philanthropist, Parton’s list of accolades is longer than a country mile, and they’re the rare sort of achievements that have crossover appeal.
I mention Our Lady of the Wildflowers because I have just signed my newborn son up for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a program funded primarily by the Dollywood Foundation (with some funding from community partners), which provides free books for children from birth to age 5. If that sounds like nothing more than a tax write-off, consider that Parton has said the program was inspired by her father’s struggles reading and that she credits her mother’s songs and stories as an inspiration for her own eventual creative career. Consider also that 21 percent of adults in the United States are illiterate, and a whopping 54 percent of Americans read below a sixth-grade level. According to the National Literacy Institute, low levels of literacy cost the U.S. up to $2.2 trillion per year.
As I write these words, the Imagination Library’s funding is under attack in Indiana. The state’s (Republican) governor, Mike Braun, is looking to defund the program, likely in an attempt to curry favor with President Donald Trump and his gang of cost-cutting cronies.
“We are hopeful that Governor Braun and the Indiana Legislature will continue this vital investment by restoring the state’s funding match for local Imagination Library programs,” Parton said in a statement released online. “The beauty of the Imagination Library is that it unites us all — regardless of politics — because every child deserves the chance to dream big and succeed.”
It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic, right?
Wrong. That seemingly American-as-apple-pie statement couldn’t be more out of step with today’s values. Enough of us decided this November that a quick buck and cost-cutting are preferable to an investment in our future. With the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, USAID, NASA, and other critical programs on the chopping block, who has tears to spare for the Imagination Library?
The current moment seems to me to be summed up thusly: America says it wants Dolly Parton, but it keeps choosing Donald Trump. Though Parton is surely too intelligent ever to descend into politics — and she doesn’t have to, since she’s not desperately avoiding a lengthy stint in prison — she does seem to be the actual best version of everything Trump pretends to be.
Where Trump claims to be a self-made success, along with his siblings, he inherited a portion of his father’s estate, then valued between $250 and $300 million. Parton, on the other hand, is a real person of the people, one of 12 children raised in a single-room cabin in Pittman Center, Tennessee — her “Tennessee Mountain Home.” She wrote and sang her way to success. Trump’s populist shtick only works if one can suspend disbelief long enough to forget about his gold-plated toilet, his hush payments to porn stars, and his failed for-profit “education center.” As a businessman, his career pales in comparison to Parton’s. Through her Dollywood Foundation, she spends money by the bucketload, investing in poverty relief, in the Imagination Library, in building a cancer treatment center, in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and in preservation efforts for the bald eagle — our national bird. She has that money to invest because she’s actually good at business.
Trump’s businesses, on the other hand, have filed for bankruptcy six times. In 2011, the Gold-plated Grifter was quoted by Newsweek as saying, “I do play with the bankruptcy laws — they’re very good for me.”
Both celebrities — don’t kid yourself; Trump isn’t a politician or a businessman, he just plays one on TV — have augmented their natural appearance (and there’s no reason to judge them for that choice). Trump is famously prickly about himself, though, and completely devoid of a sense of humor. Parton, however, maneuvers through interviews like a dancer on stage, disarming reporters with comments like, “It costs a lot to look this cheap.” She’s funny, and she has a sense of humor about herself. I know who I would rather drink a beer with, and not just because “9 to 5” is one of the best songs ever written.
There do seem to be strange similarities between the two figures. Is the devil just an angel seen through a scanner, darkly? More than anything else, Parton believes in investing in what she values, while Trump and the sociopaths holding his leash seem intent in strip-mining the once-proud American government and economy for personal gain.
The moment to choose our hero has already passed. America chose self-interest over sacrifice, cruelty over compassion, petty small-mindedness over creativity. I pray that we get a chance to correct our course, and that we haven’t lost too much when that moment comes.
Jesse Davis is a former Flyer staffer; he writes a monthly Books feature for Memphis Magazine. His opinions, such as they are, were formed in his early years spent tucked away in the library stacks.
