{"id":237062,"date":"2025-07-04T09:34:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T09:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/237062\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T09:34:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T09:34:22","slug":"dolly-parton-was-warned-about-barbara-walters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/237062\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolly Parton was warned about Barbara Walters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dolly<\/p>\n

(Credit: Timothy Wildey)<\/p>\n

Thu 3 July 2025 23:00, UK <\/p>\n

While you probably shouldn\u2019t take any notes on social etiquette from David Brent, there\u2019s an episode of The Office where he jokes about Dolly Parton<\/a> in a way that lands completely differently than it did back then. \u201cIf you want the rainbow, you\u2019ve gotta put up with the rain,\u201d he quips. \u201cDo you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton.\u201d If you know the scene, then you also know what he said next.<\/p>\n

The crux of the joke is that Parton isn\u2019t typically associated with being a profound wordsmith or someone with something deep enough to add to meaningful conversations. This extends to her appearance, too: Parton has always been the butt of the joke when it comes to people you might consider reputable or credible musicians, and it\u2019s rooted in the one thing most women face in the industry.<\/p>\n

To the point where, in Parton\u2019s world, the people in her vicinity who could actually speak about her without becoming derogatory were limited, with apparently only Tom T Hall respecting her enough to talk solely about her artistry in conversations when her name would come up. As he once recalled in American Songwriter<\/a>: \u201cWhen I first got to Nashville, somebody said Tom T Hall and Kris Kristofferson at the time were the only two people who could describe Dolly Parton without using their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is also why, in the late 1970s, when Parton planned a special interview with Barbara Walters (controversial enough to be akin to Piers Morgan<\/a> in today\u2019s field), people told her she\u2019d be making a grave mistake. Parton was already the subject of humiliation among tabloids and audiences alike, so sitting down with Walters was a sure fight Parton wouldn\u2019t walk away from.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I decided to do my first Barbara Walters special, a lot of people warned, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re crazy to do that! She\u2019ll chew you up and spit you out,\u2019\u201d Parton wrote in Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. \u201cNothing could have been further from the truth. Barbara is a very insightful person. Once she realised I was real, that my insides weren\u2019t as phoney as my outsides, she got completely into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dolly<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Against everything anyone could have expected, though, Parton held her own with complete dignity, even when Walters\u2019 questions turned offensive and she started poking at her style choices and the image she\u2019s creating for herself. \u201cYou\u2019re very beautiful, you don\u2019t have to wear the blonde wigs, you don\u2019t have to wear the extreme clothes, right?\u201d Walters asked at one point, to which Parton responded with absolute grace.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly a choice,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t like to be like everybody else. I\u2019ve often made this statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable, that\u2019s the easiest thing in the world to do. So, I just decided that I would do something that would at least get the attention, and once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked and all that, then they would see there was a part of me to be appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n

When pressed about the sort of impression her image gives and whether she\u2019s aware people make jokes about her, Parton said: \u201cI\u2019m very real where it counts.\u201d<\/p>\n

In all fairness, Parton could have immediately lost her cool and called Walters out in a way that probably better reflected how she actually felt about such suggestive and pointed questions, but keeping it focused on her character and art set a good example for musicians constantly in the swarm of vulturistic journalism, not just then, but today too. Parton already knew what others thought, but explained how the joke\u2019s on them, because it\u2019s she who\u2019s in control and already ten steps ahead, not them.<\/p>\n

So, while it\u2019s easy to get annoyed at Walters and any other egotistical journalist for herding their subjects into corners with weirdly inappropriate questions, sometimes they\u2019re a blessing in disguise. As Brent was getting at, people say Parton\u2019s nothing more than a service for the male gaze, but that\u2019s the real joke here: those who dance in the flames of vanity and misogyny without any heart for music that counts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Timothy Wildey) Thu 3 July 2025 23:00, UK While you probably shouldn\u2019t take any notes on social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,18847,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-237062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-dolly-parton","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114794284178819379","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}