However decent she may have been, she still had to operate in a borderline theocratic, patriarchal place, with all the hate and discrimination that entails.
Jury's out for me, maybe she left it a better place in some ways, encouraging literacy and supporting vaccination.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 18:05, Reply)
Imagine a Nazi theme park where children are encouraged to defend the Fatherland against the Allied invaders and pack Jews onto cattle trains, etc.
Imagine a restaurant where you can choose to have waiters serve you wearing SS uniforms.
This is Dollywood.
Just swap the swastika for the battle flag of the Confederacy.
Were they her decisions? Well, she chose to put her name on it. Superficial changes were only made after years of being called out on it.
She still thought it was a good idea to have a light-hearted theme park based on the fucking Confederacy.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 18:18, Reply)
It is also one often reserved for the most heinious acts, not a tasteless theme park pitched to appeal to the American masses in the South USA.
That seems way out of proportion, at worst the theme park is propaganda.
She didn't actually own slaves, she was born there.
Compared to the shitshow in the White House and Congress it is a misdemeanor, thousands died from the covid response and withdrawal of aid, ICE even have camps.
I'm not a particular fan of hers but, evil is a very black and white judgement. Is there anything a Elon Musk fan like yourself actually approves of?
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 20:35, Reply)
Even when I was something of a spacex apologist, long before the Nazi shit came out, I was very critical of his anti-unionism and his relationship with the truth. Go back and check.
I approve of humanism, class/sexual/racial equality, so naturally I lean towards anti-Nazism, anti-slavery, anti-Confederacy. I'm not sure why I need to defend myself, when I have not attacked you...
I also said evil is shorthand for what her deeds entailed, which was making a pro-confederacy theme park, for fucks sake. You think it's just tasteless to make a theme park celebrating a moral evil? Is me pointing out this obvious moral evil why you feel personally attacked?
The shitshow in the White House has ordered flags at half mast for Dolly. It seems their values were more closely aligned than you thought.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 21:01, Reply)
I just don't think it's quite that clear cut, I'd need to know more and I don't follow celebrities.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2026, 1:04, Reply)
I don't know all that there is to know about Musk, but I know he's a fucking Nazi. I don't know much about Parton, but I know she profited from a theme park dedicated to the pro-slavery Confederacy.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2026, 22:23, Reply)
Here's a more serious/nuanced source than a celebrity gossip website
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america/episodes/dixie-disappearance?tab=transcript
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 19:50, Reply)
My linked article at least gets straight (no pun intended) to the point.
ETA:
This transcript only deals with one attraction at Dollywood, does not deal with the homophobia, the welcoming of the KKK to protest the Gay Day, does not mention the train ride which was the origin of the park, and is a does not try to suggest that Dolly, the owner and main contributing content creator of the racist theme park, is at all a fucking racist.
What you call nuance I'd call wilful ignorance.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 20:24, Reply)
"welcoming of the KKK to protest the Gay Day" is not true
advocate.com/news/2004/05/20/kkk-protest-theme-park-gay-day-12497
I agree with FeralCat's point about your very black and white thinking but maybe that's your online persona
There's a Listen button up there in the WNYC link for anyone interested
(, Thu 27 Aug 2026, 5:28, Reply)
but it is fair to say that she sided with the KKK's 'Christian family values' over the free speech of the gay group, that she waged lawfare against those gays for using the Dollywood name, and essentially ended the Dollywood Gay Day group as a whole.
Remember that gay parent families were made to feel unwelcome for acknowledging the existence of gay people; that the same anti-political speech policy that applied to, for example, Islamists, communists and Nazis, was equally applied to homosexuals.
Still seems sinister to me.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2026, 22:11, Reply)
An entertainment company playing to the crowd with whitewashed history, not exactly evil.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 20:56, Reply)
Like *at all*?
Do business decisions trump basic morals? Do business decisions make supporting the KKK okay? Do they make excluding homosexuals okay? Do they make whitewashing genocide and human rights abuses okay?
Slavery itself was a business decision, wasn't it.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2026, 21:03, Reply)
Not her as owner deciding to be racist. She might have been, I don't know.
Business decisions don't usually reflect moral or ethical behaviour, unless there are regulations and enforcement. Their responsibility is to return a profit. That is partially why the world is pretty fucked.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2026, 1:20, Reply)