As Dolly Parton prepares to debut her new book, Behind The Seams, to be released on Oct. 17, the country music star shared why she rarely divulges her political views in public.
"Because you’re going to lose half your audience,” she said about not getting political.
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“Even within my own family, especially the last few years since Trump and Biden, all that, it’s like we can’t even go to a family dinner anymore. Especially if people are drinking, they get in a damn fight at the table. Don’t get so trapped where if you’re a Republican, you got to be this way, [and] if you’re Democrat, you got to be that way. You’re not allowed to think nothing else. Well, how crippling is that?" the 10-time Grammy winner said in a Billboard profile published on Wednesday.
Parton added, "I’ve got as many Democrats as I do Republicans as fans, and I’m not going to insult any of them because I care about all of them. I ain’t that good a Christian to think that I am so good that I can judge people. That’s God’s job, not mine."
"So as far as politics, I hate politics. Hate politics,” she said.
The country star has previously turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom, not once but twice, to avoid the appearance of political allegiances.
In 2020, the singer weighed in on race relations in a rare political comment.
“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” she said. “And of course black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”
Parton explained her comment as the view of a Christian who believes that "God is the judge, not us. I just try to be myself. I try to let everybody else be themselves.”
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When Slate magazine criticized Parton for her Dixie Stampede attraction at her Dollywood amusement park in 2017, the businesswoman then dropped "Dixie" from the attraction because of its Civil War-era origins.
"There's such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that," she said, explaining her decision. "When they said 'Dixie' was an offensive word, I thought, 'Well, I don't want to offend anybody. This is a business. We'll just call it The Stampede. As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it... That's where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose."