Dolly Parton on #BlackLivesMatter: "Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!"

Dolly Parton was typically Dolly Parton-ish—which is to say, both empathetic and excellent—today, when she responded to questions in a Billboard interview about the #BlackLivesMatter movement in about as straightforward way as anybody could want. “Of course Black lives matter,” Parton told interviewers, before adding, delightfully, “Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

Parton’s comments on the #BLM movement are just one part of the wide-ranging interview, which discusses everything from COVID-19 to the provisions she’s put in place for a world which—and we hate to even contemplate this—might one day not have Dolly Parton in it. (Dolly Parton on getting your shit in order, death-wise: “A word to all the other artists out there: If you haven’t made those provisions, do that. You don’t want to leave that mess to your family for people to have to fight over. You need to take care of that yourself, even if it’s a pain in the ass—and it is.”)

It is, in other words, A Very Good Read, as are most things in which Dolly Parton speaks frankly about her life. (While also promoting her increasingly massive lifestyle brand, and her new holiday album, and…) Among other things, it discusses the time she had to disappoint Elvis, the way her management team took her flagging mid-2000s career and transformed it back into something befitting the Queen Of Country, and, fittingly, what you should do if someone informs you that the language you’re using is offensive (as people did re: the Dollywood attraction formerly known as the Dixie Stampede a few years back): “As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.”