I have rarely, if ever, seen the kind of outpouring of praise and adoration as that for Dolly Parton upon news of her death on Tuesday at 80. And it’s understandable. On every conceivable measure of humanity – talent, beauty, intelligence, warmth, wit, grace, generosity, decency, compassion, courage, humility, authenticity, integrity, wisdom, kindness, empathy, dignity and sheer goodness – Dolly was the real deal.
This is to say, she was the very antithesis of our president. Duh, right?
Well, not so fast.
Yes, Parton seemed to embody everything that’s good about human beings, while Donald Trump personifies everything horrid. Yet when you dig a little deeper, Dolly may have had more in common with Trump than any of us care to acknowledge.
I know this sounds completely blasphemous, but stay with me here. It’s at least worthy of an intriguing compare-and-contrast – beyond both of their first names beginning with “D-o.”
Like Trump, Parton was a quintessentially American creation: fabulously famous, outrageously wealthy, instantly recognizable, relentlessly branded and possessed of hair that utterly defied the laws of nature. Both turned themselves into trademarks. Trump has his towers, banners, golf courses, hats, fragrances and gold-plated everything. Dolly had Dollywood, records, movies, books, resorts and enough Dolly-themed products to stock a small republic.
Both understood decades before the age of influencers that in America, a personality could become a multinational corporation.
Let’s also not forget that Parton shared with Trump a fondness for extravagance. Neither is/was ever accused of minimalism. Trump loves his gold and marble and rooms that look as if Louis XIV had been given an unlimited credit line at a Las Vegas furniture store. Dolly favored rhinestones, puffy wigs, sequins and dresses visible from low Earth orbit.
But right there is where any similarity between these two ends, as their contrasts could not be more glaring.
Dolly spent six decades constructing an outrageously artificial exterior around what by all accounts was a remarkably authentic person. Trump, meanwhile, has logged roughly the same amount of time erecting a veneer of faux authenticity to mask an interior of pitiful emptiness.
Trump emerged from the womb with a solid gold spoon in his mouth in a family of staggering wealth in Queens, New York, despite his mythological claims of being self-made. Parton was as genuinely rags-to-riches as they come, born into wrenching poverty in rural Tennessee and always crediting her roots for driving her to success and compassion. She never forgot where she came from.
And while Trump has never stopped whining about how much the world owes him, Parton consistently made a point to exercise massive gratitude and a glorious sense of generosity. She led with discussion of her dirt-poor youth and how it kept her humble. Humility, as you may have noticed, is not part of the Trump arsenal.
Parton always asked, “How can I make these people happy?” Trump only wonders, “How can these people make me richer and more powerful?”
Dolly wore a towering blonde wig and 6 pounds of rhinestones and somehow projected decorum. Trump wears a dark suit and red tie and conveys theatricality.
But there are three primary areas where the distinction between Dolly and Donald is/was sharpest.
The first is in having a sense of humor about oneself. Dolly practically turned self-deprecation into an art form and a kind of armor, joking about how expensive it was to look so cheap. She knew exactly what people saw when they looked at her and generally got to the punchline before they did.
A perfect example was her once having entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest at a West Hollywood, California, gay bar filled with drag queens. She made her hair bigger, her makeup heavier, her beauty mark darker. Nobody recognized her. She lost – and found the whole thing hilarious.
Then there is Trump. The man takes himself with utmost seriousness despite his persistent unconscious buffoonery, regarding self-mockery as a dangerous concession. His enormous insecurity won’t tolerate his being the butt of any joke. This has the ironic effect of making him an even greater figure of derision and caricature.
Here’s what Dolly long understood: if you take your work, but never yourself, seriously, it deprives others of ammunition. She took great glee in poking fun at her wigs, breasts, clothes, cosmetic surgery and over-the-top appearance. It made her immune to humiliation. She didn’t conflate ego and self-esteem, understanding that self-effacement could be a form of psychological power.
Trump’s inability to laugh at himself has served only to diminish him. The harder he works to prevent everyone from making him look small, the more power he gives them to make him look small. It’s also left him considerably easier to provoke.
The second substantial area where Parton and Trump severely diverged was in their approach to money. Dolly made a fortune and delighted in giving away large portions of it, most famously through her Imagination Library that distributed more than 200 million books to children. Her philanthropy was legendary.
Trump? It’s all about his accruing as much wealth as possible while parting with as little as he can. Charity? Surely you jest. To him, riches aren’t merely something to possess but evidence that proves success, status, dominance, victory. Those who have less than him are deemed scum unworthy of a dime.
Finally, the third area of greatest difference between Dolly and Donald surrounds loyalty. Dolly’s fans adored her at a level almost unprecedented in celebrity annals, yet she seemed to require almost nothing from them aside from the occasional purchase of a concert ticket. It was as pure a reciprocal love as exists between artist and fan.
Trump’s relationship with his grossly misguided followers demands unswerving devotion, the chief currency of Trumpism. Anything less than complete dedication risks transforming yesterday’s rabid cultist into today’s loser/incompetent fool.
As a result of all of this, when Parton died this week, she was mourned with an almost primal sense of national grief but concurrently celebrated for being the amazing human she so clearly was.
When Trump finally shuffles off this mortal coil, you get the sense it will trigger a celebration of a far different sort.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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