A Liberal Dose, September 2026 "Proud to Live in Dolly Parton's Tennessee"

 

 

A Liberal Dose, September 2026

“Proud to Live in Dolly Parton’s Tennessee”

Troy D. Smith

 

There are a lot of reasons to love Dolly Parton, and to grieve her loss. She was a genuinely warm, kind, caring person. Ordinarily you can never say that for sure about a celebrity, who may well have a very different reality from their curated public image. We can say it about Dolly, though, because we saw it through her actions. She spent hundreds of millions of dollars of her own money to help others: her free books for children, countless scholarships, huge donations to suffering families after the wildfires, a large infusion of funds to Vanderbilt to help develop a Covid vaccine… plus numerous other things people are just learning about, and some we never will.

Dolly turned all the stereotypes about rural Appalachia on their head. She was country as heck… but she wasn’t backwards or stupid. She was a brilliant artist and businesswoman. Like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Andy Griffith, her art spoke to liberals and conservatives alike, because it was beyond politics (but, like those others I just mentioned, she championed a lot of liberal causes). I’ve heard some conservatives complain that everyone on the left hates Christians… well, Dolly was a white Southern Christian woman, and everyone loved her. Just like everyone loved Mister Rogers, who wore his Christianity on his sleeve. That’s because they tried to be like the Christ they followed: kind, embracing, gentle, loving, inclusive. Not hateful. That does not have to be, and should not be, a political statement. It should be a religious statement, and one that everyone who claims Christianity has a choice in. 

For a long, long time people from outside our region have painted a picture of us that does not really capture who we are. You know what I mean. Ignorant, immoral, inbred, toothless, barefoot, alcoholic meth-heads looking for a handout. Sometimes the stereotypes are positive, albeit in a backhanded way -from The Beverly Hillbillies to No Time for Sergeants, Appalachians have sometimes also been portrayed as smarter and more morally pure than the city slickers trying to hoodoo them. But even then, they are presented as SIMPLE and out-of-touch with the modern world.

There’s another type of stereotype that has been, if anything, growing stronger in recent decades: Southerners and Appalachians are always hard right conservatives. That one shows up in both main political parties, as the far left writes us all off as racists and the far right embraces us all as believing just like they do. Neither of those is true.

A lot of people have moved into our county and region this decade, and that’s a good thing. I always like meeting new people and having diversity. But some -though by no means all -of those newcomers came here because they thought we were all hardcore MAGA just like them. And quite a few of us are -though I suspect that number goes down a little every day the gas prices go up a little. Sadly, among those newcomers are quite a few Christian Nationalists and quite a few white supremacists, or mixtures of the two, who have been all over the news in their efforts to essentially take over the government and culture of nearby Jackson County, where Democrats and Republicans alike -and native-born and other move-ins alike -have resisted those efforts. I’m talking about folks who’ve said things like the Civil Rights Movement and women getting the vote were mistakes, and that they hate democracy and want a dictator. I am certain they are trying to make inroads into our county, and others around us, as well. I hope we all stand up and resist that as strongly as the people of Jackson County have, and as strongly as we have stood together in opposition to data centers and flock cameras. We don’t have to be divided by politics when it comes to standing up to fascism.

I choose to live in Dolly Parton’s Tennessee, which is beautiful on many levels. Let’s work together to keep it that way.

--Troy D. Smith is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech University. His words do not necessarily represent TTU, nor are they connected in any way with his job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression of his First Amendment freedom of speech. He is executive committeeman of the Tennessee Democratic Party for District 15.

You can find all previous entries in this column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE