my grief over dolly and tim curry is absolutely parasocial but you can't understate the impact that both of those people had for queer people, for women, for people who have always had "weird" interests and big personalities, they were icons for anyone strange
I think if you were to design in a laboratory a dick-kick designed to absolutely cripple me, it would involve Dolly Parton and Tim Curry dying in concurrent days
Dolly Parton spent decades refusing to pick political sides — turning down the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice under Trump and once under Biden because she didn't want to be seen as partisan.
The country music icon, who died Tuesday at 80, built her legacy on a principle most entertainers abandoned long ago: loving her audience more than any political cause.
"I learned a long time ago, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay in show business," Parton once told ABC. "I'm not in politics, I'm an entertainer."