Watching country singer Jelly Roll offer a tearful monologue on his last day guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! -- trying mightily to convince the world he should be exempted from the culture war apocalypse currently unfolding around him – I couldn’t help feeling a small pang of pity.
He seemed a little bewildered that MAGA-friendly consumers and politicians would turn on him after he spent a week guest hosting a late-night TV show which regularly goes after their leader, Donald Trump. Jelly Roll offered a few jokes at Trump’s expense during his time in the host’s chair – and there is a long history of this president and his followers proving there is no slight petty enough for them not to seek revenge over.
This backlash comes as fans were trying to gauge his political allegiances after the performer shook hands with Trump at a UFC event in 2024 and promised after the Grammy awards in February to speak as loud and clear as possible on politics within a week or so.
But instead of joining the likes of Kid Rock or Ted Nugent in the MAGA musicians stable, Jelly Roll lobbed gentle one liners at Trump from the late night show the president hates most, and then got emotional when folks like Benny Johnson and Newsmax anchor Carl Higbie came after him.
Watching all this go down last week, I couldn’t help thinking of a country legend who weathered this sort of thing so much more gracefully over the years: Dolly Parton.
And Parton managed it in a way which sounds simple but can be super complicated – particularly in our super partisan times.
She never shied away from displaying her personal values – from starring in one of the most subversively feminist movie hits in the 1980s to funding her Imagination Library for young readers, serving as a staunch ally of LGBTQ people and standing for racial equality, all while presenting her actions as common sense morality.
“Of course, Black lives matter,” she told Billboard magazine back in 2020 when the country was roiled by protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. “Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”
But what she didn’t do, is attach those commonsense values of kindness, inclusiveness, equality and care for those less fortunate to any one politician or political party.
This strategy not only kept her from getting bogged down in today’s often maddening culture wars -- it allowed admiration for her work, her image and her values to transcend cultural boundaries in a way few artists can manage these days.
As news spread of her death Tuesday, tributes poured in from across the pop culture spectrum. The Daily Beast declared “Dolly Parton was the Last Person Everyone Loved.” The Root offered, “11 Reasons Why Black Folks Will Always Love Dolly Parton.” And NPR noted, “From Appalachia to Africa: Why Dolly Parton Was Beloved Across the Continent.”
She refused the Presidential Medal of Freedom from two different presidents – Republican and Democrat. She didn’t endorse candidates for president, announce what party she was registered to vote for or even disclose who she voted for, if anyone.
And when people asked if she ever thought of running for office, she’d bat away the question with a joke (in 2016, she noted her own, um, generous physique before quipping “we could use a few more boobs in the race” -- declining to overtly endorse Hillary Clinton or slam Donald Trump while noting her aversion to politics.)
This may be where a lot of today’s celebrities get things wrong. Much as I appreciate when smart artists throw their support behind causes I also think are important – Jane Fonda may offer a lifelong example of celebrity activism often on the right side of history – I think people may be moved more by seeing a performer they love embodying strong ethical values every day, rather than telling them who or what to vote for.
When I see Jelly Roll trying to justify shaking a historically divisive president’s hand publicly while also tossing barbs at that president from a show which has a towering reputation for roasting him every night – I see an artist getting it exactly backwards.
At best, he looks like someone letting showbiz opportunities and recreational activities put him in positions where the public can’t tell what his values really are. At worst, he’s trying to appeal to disparate audiences in a ham-handed way and angering most of them, committing a cardinal sin for most artists: looking inauthentic.
On Kimmel last week, Jelly Roll noted that he fumbled answering a question backstage at the Grammys about the brutal crackdown by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, noting he didn’t know much about politics.
“I was afraid that anything I was going to say was going to be immediately taken as a political statement,” he added. “And, ironically, by trying so hard not to make a political statement, I became one. I spent my entire career trying not to belong to a political party. Partly because until March of this year, I wasn’t even allowed to vote. But now that I have that right, it’s one I plan to exercise this coming November.”
But when your actions show your values, you don’t necessarily have to make political statements.
Parton may have had an advantage – building her legacy as a towering songwriter, captivating vocalist, shredding guitar player, ace businesswoman and generous philanthropist long before modern political extremism seeped into every corner of pop culture.
But she also had a strong track record of articulating her values outside of political parties and politicians, in ways any fan could see clearly.
Artists, ultimately, are dreamers, whose creativity can move people mightily and lead them to see life and themselves with greater insight. And once the values of honesty, fairness, equality and charity are reinforced in the audience, you will, hopefully, get better political choices.
So perhaps it’s time for Jelly Roll to start acting on what he stands for as a person and an artist apart from the political fray. Because it’s tough to blame people in the audience for making political assumptions about performers who put themselves in political situations – particularly when extremism is on the rise.
I've been trying to parse this—how Dolly did this—myself. I think you got it.
Interesting dichotomy.