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WWDD [1]

['Greg Dworkin', 'Chloris Creator']

Date: 2026-08-28  

Millions of people are put down and belittled because they talk ‘funny’, work menial jobs, come from poor neighborhoods or wear worn out, old clothes. Dolly Parton was one of those people. She wrote and sang about it. Merle Haggard wrote and sang ‘another class of people put us somewhere down below’. And Woody Guthrie wrote, ‘I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built’.

Dolly Parton lived acceptance and so she is mourned and celebrated by African Americans especially in the South, the LGBTQ community, millions of children now growing up, most of East Tennessee, and her fans worldwide. She shared her wealth, her talent, and her business abilities widely. She’d prefer to disarm people than get in a public fight.

My wife was, and is, one of those people. Her father was a meatcutter and her mom a teacher’s aide. A classmate of hers told her that ‘I can’t believe you’re this smart cause you talk funny’. A neighbor started to insult people different from him who lived near us. My wife immediately told him that we always got along with everybody growing up in her neighborhood. There are millions of people like her and Dolly Parton who live acceptance.

This acceptance, whether from deep religious convictions or belief in the power of people to change for good, is rooted in abiding love. So in spite of differences of all kinds, & especially in the US differences in wealth, race, and class, Dolly Parton’s example is there for us to practice this profound acceptance and bring together all the humanity to achieve a more perfect union.

I know my wife is committed to that. She has accepted me for 45 years and constantly shows me the small steps we each can take to bring this into being.

As Martin Luther King wrote, ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny’. This practice of acceptance was, and is, a key tenet of the Civil Rights Movement, Gandhi’s drive for independence in India, and nonviolent struggles across the globe. So What Would Dolly Do?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/28/800090444/community/wwdd/

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