It's verbal judo. She's the best interviewee on the planet.
Nobody does interviews like Dolly.
I'm very outspoken politically, but I try not to talk Dolly tics at all.
Anyway, so we're getting ready to go.
We're just waiting here in the wings.
Gotcha. Then we're going to go get in the car.
I'm excited about that.
Ask me whatever you ask me, and I'm going to tell you what I want you to hear.
I'm Chad Iboomrod. This is Dolly Barnes America, Episode 5, Dollatics.
Hat tip to Brian Sievert, Dolly's nephew and bodyguard, for coining the term.
We begin this episode in London, in Room 327 at the Savoy Hotel.
Well, they actually changed it.
Oh, they did. Just a few minutes before Dolly is supposed to walk the red carpet for the premiere of 9 to 5, the musical.
9 to 5, if you don't know, massive film from 1980 about three women who rise up against their sexist, egotistical boss, spawned one of the great political anthems of our time.
I'll go into all that later.
For the moment, just know it's being revived as a musical in London.
That's why we're here.
How are you feeling about everything so far?
Oh, it's exciting. I'm really more excited than anything because I haven't seen it all.
I mean, I've been working with them, writing new stuff and putting things together, but I'm just excited to see the new cast and to hear the new songs, how they work.
I can feel the energy of the event, and so it's hard for me to even focus.
Outside the hotel, it's mayhem.
Not only are thousands of people waiting for Dolly to emerge, but all weekend long, all throughout London, there have been protests.
I guess they're protesting some kind of fashion something, and then the environment.
I guess there's thousands of people out in the streets doing other things.
So it goes to show you there's a life within the life of the world within other worlds.
So they just tell us, OK, well, if we get blocked off because of the protesters, we go in this other door, we go around this side of the building.
So my security people, they've scattered all that out.
They know everything that's going on.
They're very very aware of everything, but it's kind of exciting, all that energy, everybody here for different reasons.
Inside the room. Accommodate everybody.
It's a spooky mix of energies.
Dolly's team, led by Danny Nizelle, her manager, are zipping around like all electric.
Dolly. Now I have to sign some autographs.
See, it never ends.
Yeah. Totally chill.
It's never out. It's never over.
It's going on all the time.
Gotcha. Danny brings in some posters with her face on it that she's supposed to sign before the show.
I'm going to capture the sound of your pen.
Okay, well, I don't know if this is going to show on that.
That don't even make a noise on this.
Danny, that's not a good one.
My hair colored that one out.
I don't know. Would you like a black Sharpie for that?
It's too late now. Go time.
All right, we're walking down the hall.
I guess we're on our way to the red carpet.
Now we're going to go down, get in the car, because we have to drive around to the red carpet to the front of the building.
Dolly hums her way down the hall.
Her dress has all of these glass beads on it that swish back and forth musically as she walks and she hums to the rhythm of their swishing.
She's flanked by, I don't know, 12 men, many of whom have very big guns.
Hello. We all crowd into this tiny elevator where there's a middle -aged British couple who happen to be standing there and are totally stunned.
We hop into a black SUV and drive literally halfway around the block from one side of the hotel to the other where the red carpet is.
time frame. Gotcha.
If you hear the mask question you're welcome to.
Alright I'll do it.
I'll do it. And if you decide to ask one right in the middle of that I'll answer you too.
Again icy calm. Oh my god look at all these people.
You ready? Are you ready for me?
Yep. Two thousand people go bonkers.
she steps out on the red carpet.
Thank you, thank you.
Hi, Dolly. Have you been asked to do a red carpet?
I don't know who's asking what.
Hello, Dolly. Hey! How are you doing?
Good to see you. She starts to give questions.
Why is the show still so relevant?
Well, I think we've made a good point.
When we did it 40 years ago, we did a lot of good.
What kind of modern resonance do you think this story has for modern audience now?
I mean, the women in work, it's a different world now.
So how modern do you think this story is?
I don't think it's as relevant as it was before and in a way with the new Me Too movement.
I think this is really a good time for it.
People ask her what advice does she have for working women.
A lot of other questions related to workplace harassment, which was a big part of the original 9 to 5.
But very quickly, the questions broaden out.
At the moment in the UK, we've got Brexit.
Have you got any dolly advice to help the UK get through?
We can hardly even take care of our own problems unless let's try to solve yours.
Several reporters ask her about Brexit.
We're going through a very funny time here in Britain at the moment with Brexit.
She gets asked about climate change, what does she think about the protests that are sweeping London.
She spends about four minutes swatting all those questions away.
But then, maybe about 10 steps and 20 questions in, something shifts.
I couldn't tell what was going on at the time, But all of a sudden, Dolly's security detail snapped into a tight circle around her.
I was caught in the middle.
I actually started to feel like I couldn't breathe.
And then the whole circle started moving really fast. I'd find out later when I spoke with Brian, Dolly's head of security, that what was actually happening in that moment was that a guy with a knife had rushed the red carpet.
Somebody had tackled him, disarmed him.
Then the rest of the security guys had made a circle around Dolly, which I was inadvertently in the middle of.
And then they whisked her away from the red carpet and in the process ejected me out onto the sidewalk.
That was bananas. That was bananas.
When Shima and I asked Brian, like, what did the guy want?
He said, I don't know, he probably just saw an opportunity.
He was like, this is just what happens.
Dolly's trying to do her job, open a new show, and somebody rushes in, tries to attach themselves to that so they can be heard. Actually, we don't know what the guy wanted.
But her team did what they always do, circumvent disaster.
Dolly seems to be able to do that time and time again, not just on red carpets.
But countless times in her career, every political election, she manages to glide above the fray.
so much so that we started calling her the great unifier it's one of the through line ideas of the series but in these intensely divided times can she do that much longer well you know people will always try to pull what her opinion is on certain politics or try to attach her to certain candidates well there's a lot of pressure people seem to be expecting a lot from me and And but I figure I'm just I can't think about that.
You know, I hope I don't let people down.
They've put me up on this pedestal.
I hope they don't knock me off of it.
Truth is, the expectations, the pedestal, it's not new.
She's been navigating that for a while.
But what has raised Dolletix to the level of an art.
It's like judo. She is.
It's verbal judo. Is that she has sidestepped controversy, stayed above the fray while standing at the center of a giant political movement that she wrote the anthem for that is still being used by politicians to this day.
Hello? And that brings us to Karen.
So my name is Karen Nussbaum.
I am my title. That's tough, man.
I am a founder of nine to five, the National Association of Working Women and Working America.
And so as I understand it, this story begins for you in the early 70s with your friendship with Jane Fonda.
Jane Fonda, the most beautiful creature of the future.
Is that right? That's right.
Jane Fonda and I were both in the Indochina peace campaign.
What was that exactly?
In the early 70s, Nixon had said, The war is over.
But it wasn't over.
The American public is not being told the truth.
Richard Nixon is telling us the war is over and the war is escalating.
And Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden created an organization called the Indochina Peace Campaign.
And it was to go back out into the public and say, we have a big responsibility here and we as political people have to be sure that we don't ever stop.
We have to bring it to an end.
This campaign famously included Jane Fonda touring North Vietnam in 1972 and broadcasting messages of support to the communist forces that the U .S. was then fighting.
Hanoi Jane would henceforth rank right up there with World War II enemy propagandists Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally.
It's what would get her the label Hanoi Jane and make her in some circles the most hated woman in America.
Okay, so as all of that was happening, Karen says she was in Boston organizing against the war.
I thought of myself as an activist, but I also had to, you know, pay the rent, and so I had to get a job.
And I ended up getting a job that was the most typical job for women, which was to be a clerical worker.
worker. Remember, keep in mind, the 1970s is this moment when you have millions of women working for wages for the first time.
This is Lane Windham, labor rights historian at Georgetown University.
You can't overestimate just the level of change that was happening in the 70s, she says.
Women until 1973, 74, couldn't even get credit in their own name.
They had to get a man or their brother or husband or whatever to get credit.
Wow. That was the culture.
Then she says you had a bunch of economic forces coming together, a bunch of civil rights legislation coming together, and suddenly 12 million women, like Karen, enter the workforce en masse.
The single most common job for women to hold is a secretary or office clerical.
And the women who held those positions were treated as the wife.
You know, they were expected to get the coffee.
I wasn't thinking about it.
It was really just, OK, this will bring in a paycheck every week.
So Karen was at Harvard working as a typist, pretty much hating her job, but seeing it as a way to fund her activism, which had to do with the war and things happening out there.
But then one day she's walking home from work and she passes by a restaurant.
right. And actually, what happened was there was a group of waitresses holding picket signs.
There's just these eight working class waitresses who, you know, got hit on the butt one time too many or disrespected by the boss or whatever it was, and they decide that they're going to go on strike.
Karen says she started to march with them and it was a light bulb moment.
Like, Like, oh, I could do activism about my work.
So she gathered 10 clerical workers together.
Working in different workplaces, a hospital, an insurance company, a publishing house, a shoe factory.
They formed a group, began to meet weekly, and after a few months.
We decided to create a citywide organization that we decided to call 9 to 5.
Over the next couple of years.
They created an office workers' bill of rights.
We want these minimum standards implemented now.
And launched a big press conference.
They did studies of the publishing industry and the banking industry.
The pay runs up to 40 % less than men get for jobs at the same skill and effort level.
There's also Phil Donahue.
He had a popular TV talk show, Daytime.
Nine to Five used to do an annual bad boss contest. Oh, they were so funny.
They were hilarious.
Okay, so like, they would hold contests.
Donahue would invite the Nine to Five activists onto the show and they would hold these big contests.
We held a contest to determine the worst thing your boss makes you do.
And they'd do it in a big public way.
So for instance... A winner was a man who owned his own business.
He was late for a meeting and he had a rip in his pants, right in the back of his pants.
and he asked his secretary to sew the rip while he kept the pants on.
He dropped his pants and she sewed the rip.
Give me some other winners, just briefly.
Then there was the boss who required his secretary to vacuum up his nail clippings from the floor.
He won the personal hygiene award. Oh, that makes my stomach turn.
So they would have a bunch of women go deliver it to him in front of the news cameras.
Okay, so Karen was doing all this, holding all these contests, filing all these lawsuits, fighting for equal pay.
She had this movie star friend.
Jane and I saw each other regularly as we worked on ending the war.
You know, every time we would see each other, she would tell me stories about what the women office workers were up against. And it was exciting to her.
Yeah. This is Jane Fonda, of course.
One day, Jane just came to me and said, what if we made a movie?
So Karen invites Jane to a meeting of 40 clerical workers that she'd organized.
Jane brings some Hollywood people with her.
One of them asked the women, have you ever dreamed of getting even with your boss?
And the place lit up.
They all had dreamed of getting even with their boss.
Yes, I remember one woman said she imagined cutting up her boss and putting him in a coffee grinder and then making drip coffee out of him.
Wow. Another fantasized breaking his knees with a bat as he walked by.
I mean, they were, you know, some of them were so violent that we couldn't possibly use them in the movie.
But she says when she heard all those dark fantasies start spilling out.
And I thought, oh, my God, there it is.
There's the movie. 20th Century Fox presents a tribute to anyone who has ever been overworked, underpaid and pushed to the edge by an ungrateful boss.
Quick refresher on the movie in case you haven't seen it Or haven't seen it recently 9 to 5 is the story of three female office workers There's Violet Played by Lily Tomlin There's Dora Lee Played by Dolly Parton And there's Judy Played by Jane Fonda So they've got this boss Mr. Hart Who's played by Dabney Coleman Alman who demeans the female employees, openly harasses Dolly's character.
Mr. Hart? Told you before, I'm a married woman.
I'm a married man. That's what makes it so perfect.
And the story of the movie is these three women getting revenge.
Get him and hunt him down.
And it's, of course, hilarious and over the top.
They inadvertently kidnap him.
At one point, they string him up from the ceiling.
Did you see the look on his face?
One of the interesting things we learned is that the original script for the movie was way darker, a little closer in spirit to that nine to five meeting.
I mean, there was a cyanide scene written in an electrocution scene.
But Jane Fonda nixed that version because she felt that the only way the movie would work as a political vehicle was if it were a farce.
You know, the way I think you make these kind of movies is you make a movie so that even if people don't want to deal with the issues that we're raising, they'll like the movie anyway because it's really funny.
And as we know, A man in Hollywood, Jim Brown, goes behind the scenes of the movie 9 to 5 to find out what the office talk is.
People did like the movie.
It blew up. Jane remembers women shouting at the screen.
These were their stories, and I knew that the fact that we were putting their issues up on the screen this way would make a real difference.
This was really the first national conversation about workplace harassment.
It was like MeToo beta.
And it allowed us to explode.
Karen says 9to5 became a full -fledged union and added 20 local chapters almost immediately.
It just took off like a rocket.
Office workers all over the country felt empowered and uplifted and seen for the first time because of the movie.
So now we come back to Dolly, who at this point had never been in a movie.
No. And what gave you the idea to cast her?
It went like this. During the process of development...
She says she was driving home one day...
I turned the radio on, and Dolly Parton was singing Two Doors Down.
and I suddenly had a vision of Dolly as a secretary.
Just the visual, you know, she can't see her hands typing with those long fingernails everything about it made me laugh and I thought, wow, she's never been in a movie even if she can, which I had no idea if she could or not I thought people would want to see the movie because of her you know I didn't realize how fabulous the choice would end up being I wonder was there any thought in your mind that like you're trying to deliver a message like a political message in a movie but you are a polarizing figure at this point and that maybe she was a way to bridge to an audience that you wouldn't normally
be able to reach well I didn't say that That would have implied that I was smarter than I am and more strategic.
A real business person would have thought, oh, that would bring in the southern demographic.
That's a good business idea.
No, I didn't think that way.
Dolly in her autobiography.
She was very upfront about the fact that she thought I'd help the film do well in the south.
Says the exact opposite.
But as for what Dolly was thinking at the time.
I'd like to thank all of you for coming this afternoon.
And Chia explained this at a press event on the day of the film's opening.
Well, I was attracted to the idea of doing 9 to 5 because I had been looking through scripts for a few months, and so it just seemed like it would be a good idea, and working for the first time in a film with great people like Jane and Lily, I figured if it was a success that we would all enjoy, you know, the benefits, and if it was a flop, they could take the blame for it.
dolly said in a very tongue -in -cheek sort of way but she was very up front about it that she was making a political calculation she knew that for her country music fans appearing with jane fonda hanoi jane was risky because she's so outspoken and so political and uh you know a lot of stuff she talks about i don't necessarily agree with but then a lot of stuff she talks about i do but i i just thought well now this ought to be real interesting because uh i'm also very very opinionated in what I believe in, although I respect anybody's beliefs and the fact that they're willing to stand up for whatever
it is. But I'm also the kind of person that if I don't like where you got it, I can tell you where to put it.
But then she says the real reason that she agreed to do the movie, to take that political risk, was for the chance to write the music for the film.
Because the music is most important to me, and I wouldn't have agreed to do 9 to 5 if I hadn't seen it as an outlet for my music, which, you know, part of my idea was to do the theme song.
One day Dolly arrived on the set, and she said, Hey, y 'all, come over here.
I think I've got a song for us.
On the set, when we did that with Jane and Lily, I wear these acrylic nails.
And she used her fingernails like a washboard, kind of, you know, keeping time, rubbing her fingernails together, clickety -clickety -click.
I thought it sounded like a typewriter, too, So I'd do, I'd tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen.
Cup of ambition. I love that line.
And I remember when I was writing that poem myself, and I was going to say coffee, and I thought, a cup of ambition.
Yeah! And I said, high five.
And she sang The Working 9 to 5.
Working 9 to 5 What a way to make a living Get it getting by And I mean, both Lily and I looked at each other, and we had goosebumps, because we knew this was it, and that it was going to be a huge hit, and it would become a movement anthem.
Oh, did you know that immediately?
Yeah. Jane says from the moment she heard the song, she just knew this was the entire working woman's movement captured.
That this was going to outlive the movie because it was all there.
Yeah. When people think about working women or working, that's the go -to song.
And as for why it works so well.
Nussbaum says it's a perfect anthem.
Here's how Karen Nussbaum broke it down to Lynn Neary of NPR.
She says, check out the sequence of ideas in the song.
It starts with pride.
Pour yourself a cup of ambition.
And then it goes to grievances.
They always take the credit.
It then goes to class conflict.
You're just a step on the boss man's ladder, and then it ends with collective power.
You're in the same boat with a lot of your friends.
In the space of this wildly popular song with a great beat, Dolly Parton just puts it all together all by herself.
And if you feel like the 9 to 5 song is on a continuous loop in your brain, it's because you're hearing it all over the place.
But Elizabeth Warren...
Please join me in welcoming the next president of the United States of America.
Went to make her announcement that she was going to run for president.
Elizabeth Warren! She was playing 9 to 5.
Oh, I'm a huge Dolly Parton fan.
I mean, what's not to love, right?
Before her... The next president of the United States, Hillary Clinton!
She was playing 9 to 5.
But here's where you get to the dollatics of it all.
You've got one of the great political protest songs of the last, I don't know, 50 years?
You can debate me on that.
I'll stand by it. It's a song that was born from a movie literally made to promote a union.
And yet when Elizabeth Warren tried to use the song, Elizabeth Warren, who is a huge supporter of unions, Dolly's manager, Danny Nizel, issued a statement saying, We did not approve this request, and we do not approve requests like this of a political nature.
Coming up, we ask Dolly, what's really behind that?
That refusal. And her answer?
I gotta say it is stuck so deep in my head that literally I've been thinking about it every day for the last 18 months.
I'm Jad Abumrad, Dolly Parton's America will continue in a moment.
I'm Jad Abumrad, this is Dolly Parton's America.
America. I'll admit that when I learned about nine to five, the labor movement and how inspired nine to five, the movie and how that gave birth to nine to five, the song, which probably right now is being sung at 95 different protests.
I'll admit I was a little puzzled by the thing you hear often from Dolly and her team, which is that we don't do politics.
We do not approve requests of a political nature.
Well, isn't the song a political song?
I mean, that's where I was at. Wasn't sure what to make of this thing, which seemed like a contradiction to me.
But then we got to talking about this one moment.
It came up the first time in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel in the UK, talking to this guy.
I'm Sam Haskell. He's one of Dolly's production partners.
We produce movies together.
We've done things for NBC, Lifetime.
We were sitting in the lobby and we started to talk about dollatics, how anytime a political subject comes up...
She'll deflect, and I'll give you a perfect example.
We found ourselves nominated for Best Movie of the Year at the Emmys...
TV is the vast wonderland!
...in 2017. The nominees for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series are...
Well, it just so happened that...
Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin...
Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda were also nominated for Grace and Frankie.
So I had this idea that I let become everybody else's idea, but I had this idea that we should have the three of them reunite for the first time since 9 to 5 because they're all three Emmy nominees at the same award show.
That was your idea?
That was my idea. Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, here they are again and still working at 9 to 5.
Here are the tonight's nominees, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and James Bonda.
Well, if you'll remember, they came out with Dolly in the Middle.
Thank you, oh that's nice.
Well we appreciate that, and personally I have been waiting for a 9 to 5 reunion ever since we did the first one.
Well. Can you walk me through that moment from your perspective?
Yeah. So Trump's been in office for about 10 months, 9 months at this point, the three of you walk out, you're going to present an award for Best Supporting Actor.
First thing that happens is Jane Fonda says, I forget what it was.
Well, it was a line actually from the movie Lying Hippocritical...
You're a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.
Back in 1980 in that movie, we refused to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.
Really? And in 2017, we still refuse to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.
It was really the famous line from the show, 9 to 5, and a lot of people didn't know that, but they were using it in a roundabout way to apply to Donald Trump.
Your eyes got really wide when they said it.
Well, I didn't like it.
I had already told Jane Lilly.
I said, now look, I'm not going to get into the politics of anything.
thing so they wanted they had the writers had written up this whole stuff for us to say i said i'm not saying it i don't do politics i have too many fans on both sides of the fence of course i have my opinion about everything but i learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things i saw what happened to the dixie chicks and uh let me just stop the tape for a second when dolly talks about what happened to the dixie chicks What she's referring to is something that happened in March of 2003.
The Dixie Chicks were the highest selling female band of all time.
They had a number one song, they were touring Europe, but then in London.
Natalie Maynes, the lead singer, is talking to the London crowd.
And she says, It's kind of hard to hear, but she says, She was referring to George W.
Bush, who was from Texas, so were the Dixie Chicks.
London crowd loves it.
The London story was picked up by the Associated Press and printed in newspapers all over the United States.
This was 18 months after 9 -11 and just 10 days before the U .S. would invade Iraq.
And how they can say I'm ashamed that the president's from Texas?
Come on, man. Traitors, Dixie sluts, anti -America.
I think they could send Natalie over to Iraq, strap her to a bomb, and just drop her over Baghdad.
I never want to hear another Dixie Chick song again.
We're going to boycott them for their music, and we're going to boycott you for playing it if you do.
Country Radio Overnight turns its back on the Dixie Chicks.
As a result of statements made by members of the Dixie Chicks at a concert, two radio networks banned the Dixie Chicks from their playlists at a chain level.
The Chicks' number one hit, Traveling Soldier, quickly fell from the top of the charts.
Their record sales crashed and their career kind of crashed too.
All because of one split second comment aimed at President Bush right before the war with Iraq.
I have as many fans that are Democrats as I do Republicans.
and you don't want to hurt anybody and it's not my place to be doing that anyway I'm an entertainer that's what I said to them I'm an entertainer I am not up here to bash somebody else so y 'all just do what you do I'm not playing that game So here's what happens.
That being said, tonight we're here to recognize some men who conduct themselves with the utmost integrity.
They're nominated for their extraordinary work in supporting roles.
Right at this moment, Dolly steps in.
Well, I know about support.
support. Hadn't been for good support.
Well, yeah, shocking off here would be more like Flopsy and Droopy, but I think.
Try to turn it around and make it kind of funny and instead of doing that, like I say, I can always depend on a boob joke, you know, if I have to.
That's why I got to lean back on them.
Like I said, I don't know if I'm supporting them or they're They're supporting me.
How about a shout -out for Dabney Coleman out there?
Actually, I'm here to have a good time tonight.
And I'm just hoping, well, congratulations on your nomination for your show.
I'm just hoping. You too, by the way.
Yeah, thank you. I'm just hoping that I'm going to get one of those Grace and Frankie vibrators in my swag bag tonight.
You think that's possible?
Within just a few seconds, Dahle had disarmed the whole room.
anyway here are the nominees for outstanding supporting actor in a limited series or movie that whole night they had just everything was just bashing you know donald trump it wouldn't make any difference how i feel about him i just thought my god you know it's like and somebody you know just why does it all have to be about politics in the days after the emmys some people praised dolly and how she sort of navigated the situation she's done a very good job of keeping But she also came in for a fair amount of criticism, from all angles.
I want to talk briefly about the statements made by Hanoi Jane Fonda and Lily Liptard at Tomlin at last night's Emmy Awards ceremony.
She knew what was going down.
She knew what they were going to do.
Parton stayed silent.
Does Dolly Parton support those statements made?
Because I am a lifelong fan of country music, and I think that country music fans should be outraged.
Some people on the left attacked her for not speaking out against President Trump.
Others on the right attacked her for not speaking out for President Trump.
Well, you could have upheld him.
You should have said something.
I thought, no, I shouldn't have said nothing.
Because if I'd have said anything about Trump, anything good or bad, or if I'd have said anything just saying, well, you know, this or that, I'd have got booed out of that house.
I'd have been probably up there on my own but I wasn't interested in that I wasn't going to say anything good or bad no matter what I thought or felt I just knew that I wasn't playing that game but I want to be careful about that because people anyway it's just scary no matter what you say is wrong At this point Shima jumped in with a question When you saw, when you're in a room and everyone's attacking this man, like Trump, because of your story of forgiveness, does it almost make you feel like you want to protect him?
Yes. What was your feeling?
I wanted to say, let's pray for the president.
Why don't we pray for the president?
If we're having all these problems, let's just, you know, why don't we just pray for Mr. President?
You know, it's like I wanted to say that, but I thought, no, keep your damn mouth shut.
That won't work either.
So, tit joke. When all else fails, be funny or try to be funny.
Wow, that's really interesting.
I have to be honest, that moment messed me up.
I kept thinking about it.
You know, I mean, I came in thinking that her refusal to talk about Trump was probably mostly a business calculation.
She has a lot that she needs to protect, including a massive charitable foundation.
So I think we can all get that.
But it's also easy to see that silence cynically, like a refusal to speak truth just because it might hurt the bottom line.
But when she said, let's pray for the president, it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
I thought, oh, no, no, no, that's not all that's happening here.
I mean, this is not somebody who is denying the reality of America.
If you just look at the 9 to 5 album itself, in addition to the song 9 to 5, you've got a song about the racist treatment of deportees.
There's another labor rights song on there.
there's a song about the plight of mine workers dying in mines like she's been singing about political social issues since the 60s we talked about this in episode one so this is not someone who's in denial but the trump comment it made me realize oh i get it she's saying her stake in the sand is that she will not cast anybody out i'd like to say a little bit something about that i love I thought back to those press conferences.
When Dolly started working with Jane Fonda, her country music fans would boo when Jane's name came up.
But in every press conference and interview she would insist. But there is this sweet, gentle side in Jane that I think is so sweet and lovable.
It's a side that the public never sees, and I know that it's hard to believe, but she's a very caring person.
I thought back to all our conversations about Porter Wagner.
Yeah, I just finally just thought, I'm gonna break myself if I don't go.
This is a guy that'd be really easy to turn into a cardboard cutout of a misogynistic ass who held her back.
And frankly, I was going that direction in my questioning.
There's a power thing happening, for sure.
Well, it's more complicated than that.
Just think about it.
He had had this show for years.
He didn't need me. She just refused to flatten the guy.
He wasn't expecting me to be all the way.
And it seems suddenly clear to me that, yes, while there is a business logic here, this is also a spiritual stance this is an ethos that she has chosen and it is undeniably one of the reasons that she can have the fan base that she has because everybody feels safe at a Dolly Parton concert afterwards you know I realized that it had put Dolly perhaps in a difficult situation um because dolly is not a political activist um and you know many of her fans are trump supporters so i i think it was awkward for her and i felt bad about that did you talk about that with her afterwards um i don't remember
i don't remember but you know i i heard that there you know there there was some, you know, some of the fans objected to it.
Yeah. And, you know, I very much respect Dolly's—she does have a very diverse fan base.
She loves her fans, and her fans love her.
I mean, I've been to her concerts where her fans are, you know, tears rolling down their face.
I mean, there's a connection between Dolly and her fans unlike any that I have ever seen in my life.
Wow. And she has to protect that.
I'm in a very, very different place.
Some people, there's almost a symbiotic relationship with fans.
I'm not in that situation.
It's very different for me.
I'm trying to tuck my waist in, but I don't think I'm ever going to do it like you.
Well, you got it. We're good.
We're just messing around.
Gorgeous lighting, whoever did it, thank you.
Telephone's off if you're near to the party.
Back in London, a couple hours before the physical knife situation on the red carpet, we got to watch Dolly continually fend off other, more veiled attempts to pin her down on politics.
What do you think, you know, without naming names, there are people in politics who might talk about women in less favorable terms than others, grabbing them by certain parts of their anatomy.
I mean, do you think that kind of language is useful or helpful in American politics these days?
Anytime the president came up, which was often.
What people do to each other, I'm sorry, I didn't get the first part of it.
Well, I'm talking about President Trump, trying to allude to him in the language he talks about grabbing women by certain parts of their anatomy.
Oh, I'm not even going to talk about any of that stuff, because I refuse to talk.
I just think people should treat everybody with respect.
Every time Trump came up, Dolly shut it down.
And it did make me think, at this moment when even having cereals somehow becomes about President Trump, is it even possible to do what she's trying to do?
Is it even okay? I think this code of silence is what's keeping women down.
Just days after we returned from that UK trip, Stella Parton, Dolly's sister, who's also a recording artist, appeared on a podcast called Our Stories and spoke with a woman named Adrina Austin.
And I find that is very disheartening to me.
Basically pointed a finger at her sister.
My sister should speak out more.
I honestly call her out.
She should speak out more.
And I'm ashamed of my sister for keeping her mouth shut.
She can run it all day long when it's about something else.
Well, speak up against injustice.
Now, who is your sister?
Just for people who may not know.
Dolly Parton. Speak up.
You know, it's like we've just divided.
I did. It's just tore my own family apart, this political stuff.
We can't even have a nice dinner like we used to have. We'd laugh about things was going on, something going on in the family or some jokes or whatever.
Now everybody's arguing about politics.
And I said, can we just stop and eat?
Let's stop. Don't do that.
We don't need to talk about that now.
Shima jumped in with one more question.
Sometimes when I don't speak up, people get hurt because I don't say what needed to be said.
Do you ever feel like by not opposing, like maybe it is hurting others, or you could be taking other people's pain away?
Do you ever worry about that or think about that?
No, because I know that when the time comes, I will speak out.
I have a great sense of timing, and that's always worked in my favor.
That's why I say I don't just join the marches.
I don't just join the group.
I know that my time will come, and hopefully when it does, I will say my peace.
When she said that I thought When would be a good time to speak What would need to change What would she say How would we hear it Would we hear it?
I thought about a Quaker meeting I'd gone to once with a friend where they tell you to wait in silence until the inspiration compels you to speak, and so you wait for something to happen.
Then I thought about her music, which never seems to wait.
It just comes in this unending stream, and she channels that stuff.
So in lieu of her saying her piece, We certainly have her singing it.
Dolly Parton's America was produced, written, and edited by me and Shima Oliai, brought to you by Awesome Audio, that's OSM Audio, and WNYC Studios.
We had production help from W.
Harry Fortuna, original music by Leroy Anderson, the typewriter, used with the permission of Woodbury Music Company.
Thanks to the folks at Sony.
Special thanks to Peter at HarperCollins, Lynn Sacco.
huge thanks to Pat Resnick, Karen Nussbaum and her archives at Wayne State University, Sam Shahi, David Dodson, Pat Walters, Lula Miller, Suzy Lechtenberg and Soren Wheeler, thanks as always to my dad, I also want to take this moment to thank Dolly Barton and Danny Nazell and the entire crew for being so generous with their time they did not have to spend the amount of time that they spent with us, they did not have to answer all of our sometimes very annoying questions, but they did and we are grateful We've partnered with Apple Music to bring you a companion playlist that will be updated each
week with music you'll hear in the episode plus some of our favorites.
You can find that on our website at dollypartonsamerica .org.
Next week on Dolly Parton's America.
You bet. I said, look, I'm a writer.
Jolene's a whore. We take a Dolly classic and turn it on its head.
I got my little melodica.
Oh, I love that verse.
It's so good. That's coming up next week on Dolly Parton's America.
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