The loss is tremendous. Just as big as her ample... ...personality.
There is absolutely no one on earth that compares. Dolly was literally in a class by herself.
She thrust herself with grit and sheer will, with a little help from her huge talent, from the dirt-poor hollers of Tennessee to the bursting nebula of Stardom.
Tributes have poured in about the Queen of Country. They talk about her immense musical talent. And it was immense. She wrote over 3000 songs. Twenty-five of her songs hit #1 on the Country Billboard charts – nine #1 albums appeared there – and two songs on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Dolly received 11 Grammys from 30 nominations, plus numerous awards and trophies from the Country Music Association (CMA), Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards and the American Music Awards (AMAs).
She was inducted into the Grand Ol' Opry in 1969, after performing there since 1959, when she was 13 years old. She is in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
PLUS! Dolly earned a Primetime Emmy award, nominations for Tonys, Golden Globes, and Oscars.
Tributes have mentioned her business sense. She was a movie and television producer, a theme park developer, a shrewd protector of her rights, and a collaborator.
Tributes have mentioned her devotion. To her craft, to her husband Carl Dean, to Porter Wagoner, to her family, and to her faith.
She was a feminist, even though she thought she wasn't. She made it big in country music when precious few women were able to, and she paved the way for other women to become superstars in their own right.
She was political, even though she said she wasn't. Every action she took was a statement. She was deliberate about it, but never overt.
She indeed wore a coat of many colors, and she could have made her fortune from any one of her talents. Her singing was beyond compare. She could pick the hell out of a guitar. She could have made a fortune by selling her songs; Dolly wrote an amazing number of songs, yet even in their abundance, each one was a treasure. She could have made it with just her business sense. Her business acumen was spot-on – leaving Porter Wagoner was her first best decision, and keeping the rights to "I Will Always Love You" is a close second. She could have made it just on her genuine acting.
Hell, she could've made a fortune just from her giggle.
But what hits me most and makes me cry for the loss of her, but more for the having of her, was that she was the embodiment of inclusivity and authenticity.
Dolly loved everybody unconditionally. Period. She embraced all, north and south, right and left, queer and straight, black, white, whoever. She especially loved her fans. She never forgot that her fans were the ones who cast her into the Megastar Atmosphere. There was no one that Dolly didn't love, even if they didn't love her back. But just about everyone did.
Making it to superstardom and multi-millionaire status was just a means to an end. She cared about people, she cared about humanity. She unapologetically loved the fact that Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love you" made her millions, but she put those millions to work. She was a philanthropist extraordinaire, gifting millions of Whitney's version's dollars to invest in a black community in Nashville, using more millions to lift up "her people" of Tennessee for education and after disasters. She donated a million dollars for the development of the covid vaccine, and most enduring of all, the millions and millions of books that she provided to hundreds of millions of children around the world. Her 30-year-old Imagination Library (please consider donating) is now reaching its second generation of children.
She was 100% authentic. Yes, she had plastic surgery; yes, she had an out-of-this-world big-wig, big-boob, red-lip, high-heel, rhinestone persona. But Dolly never had a mask. What you saw was what you got. Dolly was unabashedly Dolly.
Losing Dolly Parton is like losing a piece of America's very being. It's not an exaggeration. If even 1% of people could embody all that is good, like Dolly did, we'd be in a far different place. WWDD? What would Dolly do? Each of us should ask that question at every crossroads. If we all did, imagine the light we'd bring!
Dolly moved through the world with dignity and warmth. Listening to Dolly sing or tell stories felt like you were home. She was intelligent, she was deep, she was funny, she was humble, she was loving, she was poignant, she was proud, she was silly. Most of all, she was kind. She was family to all of us. And that is what hits so hard. We're losing our own Auntie Dolly.
Well, it's been a long while. Traveling, life stuff, no blogging.
Way too much has happened in our Alternate Universe in the last two months that there is no way to catch up on it all, so I'll hit a few highlights and maybe get into my normal groove.
In no particular order, a few topics.
The Reflecting Poo-Poo
Last time we met, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, after $14 million dollar no-bid "restoration" had begun to fill with algae. What follows is maddening but not at all surprising.
Workers poured hydrogen peroxide from gallon jugs into the 6,750,000-gallon pool in an attempt to stop the growth of algae.
The new paint job had been rushed and hadn't had time to cure. It's been speculated that the hydrogen peroxide interacted with the too-new paint and it began to peel. But other analysis suggests that it was a screwed up installation from the get-go.
Soon, tourists noticed floating pieces of paint and some of them picked up or touched pieces.
Those people, including former Olympic canoer David Hearn, were arrested and charged with vandalism. MAGA talking heads from up and down swore that vandalism caused the pool's failure.
The FBI soon determined that contractor errors, not vandalism, had caused the problem. Jeanine Pinot, recently appointed United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, had a rare sensical thought and dropped all charges against Hearn, but not before his name and his reputation were publicly and nationally drug through the mud.
Dear Leader recently visited Turkey for the annual NATO summit. He flew over in his huge, expensive airplane surveillance machine that had been gifted to him by Qatar and "retrofitted" by way of $400 million of your and my money.
I reluctantly use ChatGPT sometimes. This one was pretty good.
Because the aircraft is not secure enough, it was decided that he would not fly home in that Qatari plane, but would bring in his regular Air Force One plane to take him, his staffers, and a bunch of reporters back.
But because he is universally hated by everyone, and no one more than the Iranians, he got piss-scared that his plane would be targeted by an enemy missile.
Un-fucking-believeably, he decided to board the older Air Force One in front of cameras, go to the back of the plane and to the opposite side, where a catering cart had been hoisted. He wedged himself inside the cart, which took him to another military jet.
With him in the plane (and maybe in the cart? This detail is unclear) were three staffers: Diaper-bag handler Natalie Harp, "Body Man" Walt Nauta (who had been indicted along with 45 in the classified documents case), and loyalist and ne'er-do-well Dan Scavino. Pete Kegstand also joined – hey, someone had to bring the whiskey! – walking through the military jet's regular doors
Everyone else, including Li'l Play Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Stepheratu Miller, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, chief liar Steven Cheung and a group of journalists, were left on Air Force One has a decoy.
The pond scum (apologies to pond scum) told no one, not even the high-level staffers – cabinet members! – that got left behind. He just shrugged and left his patsys on the decoy plane.
What a scummy coward. A captain who takes the one good non-leaky lifeboat as he leaves his ship to sink. What an absolute worm of a person.
Congress is demanding answers.
The internet, once again, came to the rescue. Ya gotta laugh to keep from crying.
Captioned by LSR
The Travesty
While Cheeseburger 1 was hiding in a catering cart, actual warriors have gotten so desperate about the conditions on their ship that they are trying to jump overboard.
The Washington Post reported that sailors on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln have been attempting to jump overboard. At least two have been successful, one with a life vest and one without (both was rescued).
The sailors have been on the ship for a record-breaking 250-plus days, with no time on land. The conditions are deplorable: inadequate hygiene supplies, inadequate food, moldy showers. and broken toilets are among the horrific conditions they are forced to endure.
Secretary of Defense and testosterone junkie Whiskey Pete's assessment? "Fake news."
I hate this shit.
Dr. Fauci
This national hero was drug into the Capitol to be questioned about the Covid crisis response by MAGAt reprobates with sticks up their behinds. Smartly, Fauci pled the Fifth to their questions.
And because he pled the Fifth – which by the way is his Constitutional right – the MAGAts voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
Pssst... the pandemic was a worldwide crisis. Health leaders around the world were scrambling to protect their citizens by enacting guidelines that were very similar to Fauci's. Dr. Fauci helped save lives in the U.S.
Leave him the Eff alone!!!
Primary Wins
Oooooh lookie here. A progressive was voted by Dems, this one advancing in Michigan's Senate race.
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, a native (yes he was born in the United States) of Michigan, won the Democratic primary a couple weeks ago. He is a Rhodes scholar who attended Oxford before earning his MD at Columbia University. His career before politics was in public health epidemiology. And he's a progressive. And he's smart. And he's ummmm..... well, friends. He's hot.
Of course, the Right hates him. Hates his color, hates his name, hates his Medicare for all, hates his public service, hates his burly physique, hate his big brains, hates his loving marriage. And they HATE that he'll be the next Senator from Michigan.
Let's do all we can to support his candidacy.
Also in the upper midwest: Minnesota Dems voted for another progressive to run for Senate. Native American Peggy Flanagan has been serving as Lt. Governor. Also in Minnesota, Sen. Amy Klobachar won the Dem nomination for Governor to replace retiring Tim Walz.
The Incompetence
How about this gem?
Scene: an international meeting of nations, discussing the important topic of AIDS. The U.S. State Department prepares a presentation, including a map of Africa.
Can we please stop being the laughingstock of the world?
The Dementia Slide
It continues.
Every public appearance is rife with evidence of his dementia. His speech and language symptoms are accelerating, he's staying up at all hours posting AI shit, he is falling asleep in front of cameras just as frequently, if not more, and he has new locations for his medication infusion bruises. Or is he shaking hands with his forearms?
I have time for just a few examples (traveling again in a couple days!), but there are plenty of others. Plenty!!
Speech, Language, and Memory
His speech has been extra slushy and slurpy lately. It's alarming.
I hate to make you listen to it, but this speech has many instances of very imprecise speech. I believe it's due to his dementia or many mini-strokes. Others have speculated that he has an obturator to close up a cocaine-induced lesion inside his mouth and it's become ill-fitting. In any case, there's something very wrong with this man.
Here's him talking to miners. Check the disordered speech and saliva management (slurping or hard swallowing) at timestamps 3:08-3:33, 4:06, 4:44, 5:39, 5:56-6:08, 7:07 (saliva management), 8:39 (saliva management), 9:40, 11:29 (saliva management), 12:15, 13:19.
There are many more examples of mushy speech, especially on /s/ and sister sound /z/, perhaps the most common sounds in English. His /k/ sound is also imprecise, like at 9:06 in company. It's not the only example; I'm just getting tired of hearing him!
In this speech, he has a semantic paraphasia where he substitutes "prosecute" for probably "execute" when he says "We have a war to prosecute" at timestamp 14:22.
At 12:20: A word-finding glitch when he couldn't remember the word environmentalist so he said "environments people."
Also there's a memory glitch when he didn't remember the fact that he named a council himself. Listen starting at timestamp 2:37.
I just want to point out, too, that whenever he reads his speeches, it is clear that he has never read it before nor, it seems, had ever discussed the topic.
His off-script "riffs" are often about the new information that he just learned while reading his remarks. Take, for example, at timestamp 4:11. He reads a statistic about shuttered mines and says, "I thought they were going to say miners or jobs. It's mines."
They were going to say?
And just a maddening note about his malignant narcissism. He brings up mines in Oklahoma.
"I love Oklahoma."
Me too! Why do you love that wonderful state, sir? For the sweeping vistas of wide plains? For the abundance of corn fields and grazing land, feeding our country? For the rich Native American legacy – will you help to right the wrongs from the past? Or is it for the friendly people, willing to share their storm cellars with a weary traveler heading into a tornado warning (true story, by the way, check my travelblogue Little Sister Adventures)?
No.
Timestamp 6:11. "I love Oklahoma because they have 77 counties. I won all 77 three times, right? You know, oh, he's looking, right? Nobody's, you know, who second was? Ronald Reagan. 56. That's pretty good, right? I like Oklahoma."
I hate Jabba the Gut.
Ooops I think I just made you listen to the whole speech after all.
Sleepy
He took another nap-nap at a presser where he signed an executive order to change childhood vaccine schedules. Despicable behavior, both the sleeping in public and the assault on vaccines.
Here it is:
Bruising
We've all seen his frequent bruising on the backs of his hands, often clumsily covered with makeup. Now he has bruising on his arms, as shown in these photos of him golfing. He's getting some IV medications pretty darn frequently.
Miz Lindsey, Senator Turtle Dead
Southern Belle and Senator Ms Lindsey Graham died suddenly on July 11. In the meantime, his colleague and fellow MAGAt Southerner Sen. Turtle of Kentucky was hospitalized for mysterious reasons from June 14 until August 7, when he was supposedly discharged home for continued rehabilitation. See the timeline here.
Moribund Mitch has released a couple written statements as well as two shady "proof of life" photos, but there have been no live appearances, no video appearances, and no true proof of life that most Americans can believe.
Kentucky Gov. Breshears has demanded information, but it has not been forthcoming.
If Mitch is alive, I believe it is barely so. Congress is in recess now, back in a month, on September 14.
What happens if he doesn't return? The MAGAt hypocrisy will be in full force. If another Senator had had the same fate, Senate Majority Leader McTurtle would've had him removed weeks ago.
The Latest Polls
SCROTUS is falling deeper and deeper underwater in the polls.
According to a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll released yesterday, only 15% of Americans strongly approve of Trump’s job as president, down 2% from what was already a record low in April. For context, the first poll conducted after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol still had 27% of the country strongly approving of Trump, down from a high of 35% the year before. His once “unshakable” base has now dwindled to about 1 in 6 Americans. Nearly half, or 47%, strongly disapprove.
Wrap your mind around that: only 15% of Americans ‘strongly approve’ of Dear Leader. Or in other words, my dear gawd, a full 15% of Americans "strongly approve" of that lying, masochistic, demented, narcissistic, child-molesting grifter rapist?!
Ossoff: 1, Kegsbreath: 0
Sen. Jon Ossoff from Georgia was able to kick Whiskey Pete's ass handily in a recent hearing about military funding for the war with Iran.
Racist Assholes
The GOP is the Party of Racists. Ok, you knew that, but here are a couple new data points.
Nancy Mace is gross. When she's not checking inside your panties in the bathroom, she is being a racist tw@t. This is what she posted to not-Twitter recently.
I hate her.
And these people. The very sound of a middle-eastern sounding name set them to booing.
The Future is Now
Folks, midterm elections are just 80 days away. There are still a handful of primary elections between now and September 15, and then game on. Ready your postcards, your pens, your canvassing shoes, and your phones. Get ready to bring on the Blue Wave that will turn this ship around!
