The Ben Shapiro Show - August 26, 2026


Why America Agrees on Dolly Parton


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

193.6

Word count

2,620

Sentence count

200

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged


Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 Dolly Parton was an undeniable icon of Americana, both at home and abroad.
00:00:03.000 We're going to explore three specific reasons why she was so popular and universally beloved.
00:00:08.000 The truth is, Dolly Parton reminded us all of what America used to be.
00:00:11.000 The only question really is whether America can still be that thing.
00:00:15.000 Rest in peace, Dolly Parton.
00:00:16.000 As you might imagine, I'm not the world's biggest country music fan.
00:00:19.000 I like the occasional Brad Paisley song, but I didn't grow up with country music.
00:00:23.000 Really not my thing.
00:00:24.000 With that said, Dolly Parton was something that I think we have basically forgotten in America.
00:00:29.000 Just Americana.
00:00:30.000 Like, it's fine to just love Americana.
00:00:33.000 Dolly Parton is pure. 0.97
00:00:34.000 She was pure Americana.
00:00:36.000 Here was the family message that was put out in the aftermath of her death.
00:00:42.000 Dolly was a farmer, just like her daddy.
00:00:45.000 He farmed the soil, she farmed songs and happiness.
00:00:48.000 Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.
00:00:59.000 Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly.
00:01:03.000 So.
00:01:03.000 Again, the fact that even in the message about her passing, it's funny and it's Americana.
00:01:11.000 Like, that was the whole thing.
00:01:12.000 President Trump put out a statement.
00:01:14.000 He said, Very sad to report that Dolly Parton, one of the greatest country singers and far beyond ever, has just passed away.
00:01:19.000 It's a true loss for millions of people.
00:01:20.000 There's never been anyone like her and never will.
00:01:22.000 In her honor, I'm lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a one week period, beginning tonight at 6 p.m.
00:01:27.000 Rest in peace, Dolly.
00:01:27.000 The world loves you, President Trump.
00:01:30.000 Now, again, the Daily Wire points out that she wrote more than 3,000 songs during her lifetime.
00:01:35.000 She had 11 Grammys, 10 Country Music Awards, four American Music Awards, and induction into the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Songwriters Hall of Fame.
00:01:44.000 Also, she was on the silver screen in over 12 theatrical releases.
00:01:49.000 And she funneled a huge part of her wealth back into the community.
00:01:52.000 She had her Dollywood Foundation, her buddy program initiative, slash school dropout rates in her hometown of Sevier County, Tennessee, by giving 500 bucks to every seventh and eighth grader who finished high school.
00:02:03.000 And the buddy part involved two students pledging to get each other across the line.
00:02:06.000 So, Dolly Parton is maybe the last universally beloved figure in America.
00:02:11.000 And that's true for a few reasons.
00:02:13.000 So, first of all, Dolly Parton was funny and optimistic.
00:02:18.000 That was part of the charm, that she was funny.
00:02:20.000 Her whole story was about optimism, about the American dream.
00:02:23.000 The New York Times points out that she grew up dirt poor, literally dirt poor, that she was essentially born in a one bedroom cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains and Locust Ridge, according to the New York Post.
00:02:37.000 She was the fourth of 12 kids.
00:02:39.000 The cabin had no electricity, had no running water.
00:02:43.000 They all shared space, her and her 11 siblings, in a small home.
00:02:49.000 She actually recreated the cabin at her Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for fans to visit.
00:02:55.000 As the New York Times says, from her hard scrabble beginnings to glittering stardom, Ms. Parton's life was the stuff of make believe.
00:03:02.000 With her voluptuous figure, sparkly stage costumes, and blonde bouffant wigs, she was likened by the writer Chet Flippo to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression.
00:03:08.000 You're a symbol of abundance.
00:03:10.000 Her songs spoke to millions, confronting privation and loss, even as they radiated possibility and hope.
00:03:14.000 I think that really is the big thing, right?
00:03:16.000 She was funny.
00:03:16.000 She was entertaining.
00:03:17.000 She was Americana.
00:03:19.000 She wasn't about, you know, the deep darkness, the sort of evils of life.
00:03:24.000 She was upbeat.
00:03:25.000 If there is one word that kind of describes Dolly Parton, she was upbeat.
00:03:29.000 Here's a clip of her from the Johnny Carson show back in 1979.
00:03:34.000 What's the song you said you made up?
00:03:35.000 Well, I wrote this song because it's been real good for me ever since I started on your show.
00:03:39.000 And you said one time once I got to be real famous, I probably wouldn't come back on the show, but I always will.
00:03:44.000 I'm here about as much as you are.
00:03:48.000 Now, it's not supposed to be too serious, sorry.
00:03:52.000 I have come a long way from the hills of Tennessee.
00:03:57.000 And I've worked hard to make the folks back home real proud of me.
00:04:01.000 Now everybody knows my name no matter where I go.
00:04:06.000 But I never really made it to the Johnny Carson show.
00:04:13.000 Again, like just fun.
00:04:15.000 It was okay to be fun.
00:04:16.000 There was a time in America where it was just okay to be fun.
00:04:19.000 And this brings us to the second point about Dolly Parton. 0.99
00:04:22.000 She remained her entire career militantly apolitical, militantly apolitical.
00:04:27.000 She was offered three times the Presidential Medal of Freedom, twice from President Trump, once from Joe Biden, and she declined it all three times because she didn't want it to be perceived as a political choice.
00:04:38.000 And here she was being asked about her politics, obviously much later in her life.
00:04:44.000 I just try to make life a little better.
00:04:47.000 I try to lift things up when they're down.
00:04:50.000 I write my songs about that sort of thing.
00:04:52.000 You'll find me and my opinions, you know, in a lot of the songs.
00:04:55.000 But most of it's based on love and acceptance and lifting people up.
00:04:59.000 I ask God every day to let me be a blessing to mankind and to uphold Him and to glorify Him.
00:05:06.000 And that's how I go about my day.
00:05:08.000 No political rallies for you, then.
00:05:09.000 No political rallies for me.
00:05:11.000 I think my joke is that. 0.99
00:05:13.000 My daddy was a Republican, my mom was a Democrat, and I'm a hypocrite. 0.95
00:05:20.000 Again, just staying out of it. 0.87
00:05:22.000 Again, there was a time in American life where this is okay.
00:05:25.000 You have to know everybody's politics.
00:05:27.000 Johnny Carson was like this too.
00:05:28.000 Johnny Carson actually was a Democrat, but on any given day, you didn't know where he was going to come down, and he didn't make his politics the center of the issue.
00:05:35.000 ABC at one point tried to get Dolly Parton to go off on Trump, and here's her response We have a president of the United States who said those things on that bus.
00:05:46.000 I'm not addressing that.
00:05:47.000 I do not get into that.
00:05:49.000 Of course, I have my opinion about everybody and everything. 0.99
00:05:52.000 But I learned a long time ago keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay in show business. 0.99
00:05:56.000 I'm not in politics, I'm an entertainer. 1.00
00:05:59.000 And yet, you're also a role model.
00:06:00.000 Yes, I am.
00:06:01.000 That's why I don't talk about people.
00:06:04.000 So if you are deciding you may want to ask me something more serious, don't, because I'm not going to answer it.
00:06:09.000 Fair warning, I might still ask.
00:06:11.000 Well, you can ask, but I might still tell you where to put it if I don't know where you got it.
00:06:16.000 I mean, good for her, right?
00:06:17.000 That's why.
00:06:18.000 Because I'm sure that she did have her opinions.
00:06:21.000 Right?
00:06:22.000 You can kind of gather them sort of from the way that she approaches it.
00:06:24.000 But like, that was her whole point.
00:06:25.000 Like, this is what I do as entertainment, and that's not the same thing as what everybody else is doing.
00:06:30.000 And this is why it rings so hollow when you see a bunch of people trying to project politics on her.
00:06:34.000 So naturally, the Democrat Socialist of America called her a hero of the working class as though she was some sort of socialist.
00:06:41.000 Okay, let's be very clear. 1.00
00:06:42.000 Dolly Parton was a very rich lady, like a very, very rich lady.
00:06:45.000 I'm not aware that she apologized for it. 1.00
00:06:47.000 She gave a lot of charity, she did a lot of great stuff.
00:06:49.000 Trying to paint her as a sort of You know, bizarre socialist is strange, but because she didn't do politics, you could project anything onto her.
00:06:58.000 And again, when she was singing Nine to Five, which is about the difficulties of the working life, or when she was in the movie Nine to Five, which is about the difficulties of working for a sexually harassing boss, that's what the movie's actually about.
00:07:09.000 It still was not rooted in this sort of deep seated America sucks and that's why this is happening to me nonsense that the DSA likes to push.
00:07:29.000 Again, she's smiling the whole time, right? 0.96
00:07:39.000 I mean, like, this is not about how life is so miserable.
00:07:50.000 I could play this on my phone, sure.
00:07:55.000 Like, again, this is, it was all kind of upbeat and charming.
00:07:59.000 Even the hard parts were upbeat and charming.
00:08:00.000 That was the whole thing.
00:08:01.000 It was like grin through the pain, grin through the problems.
00:08:04.000 Life is hard, but that doesn't mean that you have to have a bad time doing it.
00:08:08.000 Right?
00:08:08.000 That is why Dolly Parton was so popular, obviously.
00:08:12.000 I mean, she was always very grateful for her life.
00:08:16.000 Here she was talking about retiring.
00:08:18.000 This is in 2019 with CBS.
00:08:21.000 People always say, why don't you retire?
00:08:23.000 I say, and do what?
00:08:25.000 What does that even mean?
00:08:27.000 Sit on your pile of money and awards.
00:08:29.000 I don't do that.
00:08:29.000 I don't care.
00:08:30.000 I always count my blessings more than I count my money.
00:08:33.000 I don't work for money, never did.
00:08:35.000 I just wanted it was the art, it was the job.
00:08:37.000 I love the work.
00:08:40.000 And I've done well, and I'm thankful for it.
00:08:44.000 Again, does that sound like super socialistic to you?
00:08:48.000 Again, the whole thing here is just a baseline American optimism.
00:08:52.000 And she talks about giving back.
00:08:54.000 Again, she became very wealthy and then she spent a lot of her money giving back to people.
00:08:59.000 I wanted to do something special for him.
00:09:01.000 As the years went by, I saw how he thought he couldn't learn to read after he was grown.
00:09:07.000 It was just one of those things.
00:09:08.000 And so I had the idea to do something special for him.
00:09:12.000 You know, in the Bible, where it talks about honor your father and your mother, I don't think that necessarily means just to obey them.
00:09:21.000 Their name, if you can.
00:09:23.000 So I got my daddy involved with this little program.
00:09:26.000 I wanted him to feel like he was part of something special.
00:09:29.000 So we started the Imagination Library, where we were giving books to the children in our home county, in Sevier County, where we were born and raised.
00:09:39.000 And so we'd hoped that it would do good there.
00:09:42.000 And it became such a popular program that the governor of Tennessee at that time, Phil Bredesen, he thought the idea was so great, they took it and went all over Tennessee, and then later.
00:09:55.000 It went on into Canada, and now we're all over the world in different parts of the world.
00:10:00.000 I mean, that's awesome.
00:10:02.000 It's great.
00:10:02.000 I mean, Dolly Parton also understood the mission, right?
00:10:05.000 She was meticulous about only being shown in circumstances where she wanted you to see her. 0.92
00:10:12.000 She knew that she'd made up her image for showbiz, and she made herself up to be that.
00:10:16.000 Here she was describing the story of her look originally.
00:10:20.000 It was not allowed to wear makeup in the hair, and the most beautiful girl, woman I had ever seen in my life. 0.90
00:10:27.000 We didn't go to town that much, but when I would, I would go to see her because she had these long red fingernails.
00:10:32.000 She wore bright lipstick. 0.71
00:10:34.000 She had peroxide blonde hair, wore tight clothes, short.
00:10:38.000 And I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. 1.00
00:10:41.000 And my mother said, Oh, she's just trash. 1.00
00:10:43.000 She's just a tramp. 1.00
00:10:45.000 And I thought, That's what I want to be when I grow up. 0.97
00:10:55.000 Hey, and then again, she was a very religious person.
00:10:58.000 So again, it was all these things.
00:11:00.000 She said at one point in an interview with the New York Times, I've created this and played it up to make up the whole persona.
00:11:05.000 She said, This isn't all I am.
00:11:06.000 It's not even most of what I am.
00:11:08.000 Hopefully, people can see beneath the hair to know there's a brain, beneath the boobs to know there's a heart, and behind all the other stuff to know there's some talent.
00:11:15.000 And again, she was quite Christian.
00:11:17.000 Here was Dolly Parton describing her Christianity.
00:11:19.000 And this is kind of the third part of it is that she was culturally conservative, Dolly Parton.
00:11:25.000 She signaled to everybody who was between the coastal cities that she was one of them without ever becoming overtly political.
00:11:34.000 I mean, I grew up knowing Jesus loved me, and I knew that through God all things were possible.
00:11:40.000 And, you know, I just grew up with those little things that we just heard all the time.
00:11:44.000 My grandpa was a really good preacher.
00:11:46.000 He used to scare me a little bit.
00:11:47.000 He was that hellfire brimstone kind of preacher.
00:11:50.000 I wrote a song years ago called Daddy Was an Old Time Preacher Man, it was about him, about my grandpa.
00:11:55.000 Because in one of the lines, he preached hell so hot you could feel the heat.
00:11:59.000 So he was one of those people.
00:12:02.000 But anyway, it was a good life, and I wouldn't take nothing for it.
00:12:06.000 I mean, we had a hard time, but I think everybody should be proud of their family.
00:12:10.000 I think you should be proud of your religion.
00:12:12.000 I don't care what it is.
00:12:13.000 We're just all trying to get to God.
00:12:15.000 I mean, again, this is why people liked her.
00:12:21.000 The family's message said Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet her in the heavens.
00:12:29.000 So.
00:12:29.000 Why are people so upset by Dolly Parton's passing?
00:12:31.000 For the same reason Americans were upset when Johnny Carson died, or now Alex Trebek died, or any other celebrity who kind of feels like they're part of our collective life, and also who works pretty hard not to step into arenas in which Americans are divided.
00:12:44.000 These people feel like vestiges of a better time, a time when Americans could just kind of enjoy stuff together. 0.91
00:12:49.000 We could all enjoy it without everything being so political all the damn time.
00:12:52.000 Now, here's the reality I'm not sure the political climate in America today would allow a newfangled Dolly Parton to exist. 1.00
00:12:59.000 Her silence would be deafening, her refusal to take sides would be counted as cowardice. 1.00
00:13:04.000 We'd force her to say things about politics and then we'd punish her for saying things about politics. 1.00
00:13:08.000 Or maybe the secret to Dolly Parton is that she was from a different time and then she refused to bow to the dumb standards of our own. 1.00
00:13:14.000 And maybe other celebrities should take a lead from that and do the same thing. 1.00
00:13:17.000 So, RIP, Dolly Parton.
00:13:19.000 And again, one of the rare unifying moments for the United States.
00:13:22.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:13:24.000 Wasn't that amazing?
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