Dixie Disappearance

This is Dolly Prince America, I'm Chad Abumrod. We are at the eighth of nine journeys into the Dolly verse. This one, well, if our sort of throughline idea for the series is that Dolly is a kind of great unifier, it's just kind of where things get a little hard. Maybe here, if we're talking about America from Dolly's I View, we get the full on quivering mass of irreconcilable contradictions. That's Professor Nadine Hubs again, University of Michigan, Joline Scholar. Dolly is this singular figure in American culture who can pull off contradictions that nobody else could ever pull off. The question is… Is this the place where finally Dolly met her match? Dolly's Waterloo. Maybe Waterloo is putting it a little too dramatically considering that the this that she's talking about involves racing pigs? But what Nadine is referring to is a place, a place of business. As you drive into Dollywood, which Shima and I did with another Dollyologist, Ali Tikki, it's starting to get mountainous. For a while, it's all Smoky Mountains and then you pull in the pigeon forge. Wow, this is a little bit like starting to run me a Vegas. It's like the Vegas chick. I didn't expect that. You're really Vegas. That's Ali. When you roll in the pigeon forge, you drive along this mile of nightclubs in dinner theaters. It's very sparkly, very neon. You have a giant skyscraper and Godzilla hanging off of it. There's John Wayne over there and Elvis. And you Charlie Chaplin? Yeah. And you'll notice we'll be on Dolly Park and Parkway. Dolly's name is emblazoned on business, after business, and about halfway down the strip. You arrive at a big red building that looks a little bit like a barn that is the most visited dinner theater in America and has become the center of a bit of a quarrel. So there's the stampede. Charlie Burton's Dixie Stampede. It's called the Dixie Stampede. Hi y'all. I'm seeing my Dixie Stampede. The world's most visited dinner attraction. Don't miss it. Call her, go online for reservations. Actually it's not called that anymore. That's sort of the crux of the drama. Did you walk the car? No, I go first part. What? I walked the car, right? I'm not sure. I think that's fine. Shema and I visited on one of our trips to Dollywood. Now you're not allowed to record inside. But people have. Producer Shemoly, I. Hi. There are literally hundreds of recordings on YouTube. So we're going to use a few of those just to give you a sense of how it goes. Okay, okay. So basically, ladies and gentlemen, if we can have your attention please. You walk into the arena. It's huge. I wouldn't say it's in a football field. I would say it's like an Olympic-sized pool. But like with arena seats all around. It's like going to the rodeo basically. It's like going to the rodeo. It's like a tunnager in the center of this massive oval. How many seats was it again? It was 1000. Welcome to Dollywood's Stampeed. And the whole conceit of this situation. Besides eating a tremendous amount of food, I mean a full chicken and a pork loin and some soup that has a lot of cream in it and a biscuit. It was a lot of food. It was that. you quickly find out you're in a competition, a friendly competition between neighbors. The whole arena is split in half. On one side you've got the North and on the other side the South. And the announcer who rides in on this horse on his steed. He encourages each side to cheer at the other. He asks you to cheer at them and then he goes to the South side and he tells the South side. I think you know who they are. It was Northern Earth to do seven. They ain't nothing but a bunch of foul smelling gold. They can pick some bird-drawn polka's. Good punch your way out of the wet paper bag. I get there right now. Then all of a sudden. Twelve riders on horseback storm into the arena. Half of the mowing red and half of the mowing blue. Red as South blue is North. They start zipping around the ring. They look gorgeous. They're waving. Everyone starts cheering. The riders are jumping up on top of their horse standing, riding, then jumping off flipping down into the sand and then jumping back onto the horse. It was really impressive. Oh my god, yeah. And then the teams start to compete. They do a bunch of riding competitions. And the Cowboy Jows is underway. A Cowboy Jows. Kids from each side, they chase chickens at one point. The pigs come out, little piglets with capes race across the arena. Ours were quite mighty. And then you realize you're eating pork. And then let me just talk to the weirdness of it all. You are watching this. You are pounding lemonade. They are serving you lemonade in these giant gallon-sized cups shaped boots. And you're drinking gallons of lemonade. The sugar is hitting your bloodstream. And you're flying. In the back of your mind, you're having these thoughts like, civil war is a friendly rival. Was the civil war friendly? Wasn't it really about slavery? Well, yes. But, of course, bringing up slavery would be a downer. So it's not going to bring in the money. This is Patricia Davis, cultural studies professor at Northeastern University. She grew up in the South, writes a lot about Southern identity. She calls places like the Dixie Stampede. The tourist imaginary. In terms of civil war, the tourist imaginary would be the antebellum South, the huge plantation houses, the flowery bells, the noble gentleman. And everybody's happy. There is no slavery. There is no discussion of exactly what exploitation. It's led to that grandeur. It's just the grandeur that's displayed. Up until a few years ago, the Stampede hit all of those points. You had at least one location of giant plantation backdrop, Southern bells dancing and big skirts. Writers for the South would come out in uniforms that were Confederate gray. Writers for the North would be in Union blue. And there were even signs over the bathrooms that said, "Northearners only, Southerners only." The show we saw, those notes were a little more muted. But troubling thoughts would enter the mind. But anytime they did, boom. Explosion. It's brilliant theatre. This is Classics Professor Helen Morales. She wrote about the finale of the Dixie Stampede in her book Pilgrimage to Dollywood. There was a collective gasp at the beauty of the spectacle. All the audience could reflect upon the results of their civil conflict. The grand finale erupted in a crescendo of patriotism. Horses cantered information with their riders wearing lighted costumes, red, white and blue and waving the American flag. Are you proud to be in the same way? Are you proud to be an American? Boom the MC. A supersized image of a resplendent red, white and blue dolly pattern that fills the entire screen at the end of the stadium, responded, "No nor no South, no East, no West." That one united states of America, freedom and justice for all. Dolly is here. Dolly is America. The crowd erupt, screaming, clapping and stamping. It was such an overwhelming experience. That, you know, as soon as I wanted, as soon as my critical self kicked in and I thought, "Hang on, that's an appalling way to write history." That'd be a flame thrower or something to distract. It's hard to stay in one place. Ironic, serious, critical. It's difficult for me to be critical of Dolly Parton. I feel like I'm betraying myself. Helen, if you recall from the first episode, is a huge Dolly fan. I mean, her song "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" has really helped me out of many a blue period. She says, while researching her book, this was the one place in the Dolly verse that didn't quite land right for her. And she realized there's a real big divide between the Dolly she grew up with, the woman, you know, sassing back to her boss in the movie "Nine to Five." You know, wait and verb, storm supporter of LGBTQ. And this other idea of Dolly that she encountered in the South, and especially at the Stampede. It's a more conservative version, I think. You know, as Nadine Hub said at the beginning, Dolly can pull off contradictions that no one else can pull off. But then. It was 12th 2017. You're looking at live pictures out of Charlottesville, Virginia. This is where violent clashes have broken out between white nationalist. You will not replace us! And counter protest there. Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter! As you may remember, in Charlottesville, there had been a movement to take down two Confederate statues. And. People who didn't want that to happen. Groups including the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazi. Gathered to defend the statue, thanks to an violent almost immediately. One person is dead and 19 injured after a speeding vehicle drove into a group of protesters, marching peacefully through downtown Charlottesville. And suddenly, this conversation which have been bubbling for a while burst out onto the national stage. Question about who gets to write the history that we take as fact. Who gets to be honored? Demonstrators took the debate over Confederate monuments to the streets of Richmond, Virginia today. Altamore's mayor ordered the city's four Confederate monuments removed. And in the midst of all of this rethinking and taking down monuments. [Bell ringing] Hello. Is this Aisha? Yes, this is Aisha. A woman named Aisha Harris. A New York-based writer who worked at Slate at the time. She was on Slack. This isn't the days after Charlottesville and one of her colleagues' message saying, "Hey, have you heard about this thing that Dolly Parton does down in Pigeon Forge?" She's kind of escalated from there. It was like, holy crap. Like, why did I not know this? I loved only a part in like, what? She decides to fly from New York to Pigeon Forge and do what is essentially sort of a theater review of the Dixie Stampede. The tone was really funny, but also quite critical. Why are there signs over the bathroom saying Northern or Southern or only? Why is there zero mention of slavery? I was curious about the backlash. Like, did you, what was the result when you wrote the article? It's probably actually the most backlash I've had for a piece since I wrote about Santa Claus. I don't know if you recall that. I didn't know that. Writing about Santa Claus. Oh, that was you? Oh, whiteness. Oh, my God. Yeah, that was me. What she's referring to there is an article that she wrote in December of 2013 that argued that maybe it's time we stop representing Santa Claus as a new teacher. Santa Claus as an old white man. How about let's make Santa a penguin? Because a penguin is a bird that has no race. But if you want to map race onto it, it's black and white. She says a lot of people didn't like that suggestion. But when it came to her article about the Stampede, they really didn't like it. You deserve to burn and die in hell. There was one, I can't remember exactly what it said, but it sort of implied something about my family. I was like, "Okay, this is getting a little weird." One of the things that people kept saying was, and this is like the tweets and emails. You know, "Dolly Parton has done more for other people than you could ever imagine you could do." She donated money to this cause, this dog's blah, blah, blah. She's a philanthropist. And the thing about it is that I wrote the piece as a dolly fan. Did you go up with her music? I knew her up with her music. And you know, I watched 9-5 for the first time. I read about her. And she's such a smart business woman. I think that's something to celebrate and to kind of look up to. She just wanted to point out that even amazing people have blind spots. Or not that long after that the win came out. So I can understand why that sort of love of this fake Southern identity. I can see how that could creep its way into her work. But it's 2017 now. And it baffles me that 30 years later in this show still exists. Well, I mean, it's something that we're talking about for a number of years. This is Pito and. I'm the vice president of marketing and public relations for Dollar Wood. Before we just start, just to sort of like. 'Cause we're on the radio, there's a lot of sound. It's a good sound. I like the sound. It's nice and ambiance. Where are we? We're sitting in the lower lobby of Dollar Woods, Dreamor Resort and Spa, adjacent to the Dollar Wood theme park. Gotcha. According to P, they had already been talking about making some changes. Even before I used this article came out. So we started to talk about it a couple of years ago. You had heard criticisms I imagine. Not as much as you would think, honestly. I mean, I think most people got the fact that, you know, it's a good nature competition between one side of the arena and the other side of the arena. What kind of conversations are you having, like, leading up to the thing? What. what were some of those discussions about? Well, I mean, I think, is. Does that really describe what it is we're doing now? I mean, you guys have seen the show. Yeah. The discussions were. Does that really describe us? Moving forward is. You know, it's just really who we are. Everywhere is becoming more diverse. And we want to be as dolly as inclusive as we possibly can. So Pete says, after the article landed, the team huddled together with Dolly. And we'll hear from her in a second. And they decided to make some changes. First, they decided to remove all the plantation imagery and any overt references to the Civil War. So, for instance, the uniforms changed colors. There was no longer grey and blue. The Northerners were given red, and the Southerners were given blue. They got rid of those signs on the bathroom. They sort of threw out a few of the traditional music numbers, wrote some new tunes. And most importantly. We made the decision to just remove a Dixie from the name. Parton announced the show was dropping the word Dixie from its name. Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede got rid of the Dixie and is now Dolly Parton's Stampede. Anything that had a logo on it or a reference on it to the name will change. The Dixie Stampede sign still stands here in Pigeon Forge, but take a look over this way. Something looks different. In one news report, you can see giant cranes removing the word Dixie off the front of the building. Crews have been out here removing the letters on the building and anything else that has the word Dixie on it. I take. I'm happy that they did that. That's Aisha Harris again this time in the studio. You know, I like to imagine that maybe she had a change of heart. And if that's the case, then I appreciate her even more. But as you can imagine, not everybody felt that way. We're bringing people, flags, signs, we will have people out here. Coming up, we follow the story through a few more twists and turns and Dolly herself will weigh in. Dolly Parton's America will continue in a moment. Are you hungry for some great investigative journalism that sounds like a music? Then Radio Lab might be the show for you. Radio Lab began over 20 years ago as an exploration of science, philosophy, and ethics. The show is in expanded to become a platform for some of the best long form journalism and storytelling you'll hear today. Join Chad, Lulu Miller, and myself, Flethef Nasser, as we investigate stories that provoke, delight, and ask you to completely change the way you view the world. You can find Radio Lab wherever you get podcasts. This is Dolly Parton's America, Chad Shema. Bicking back up with the story, Dolly and her team announced they're changing the name of the Stampede almost immediately. You can't rewrite history just by taking a name off of it. The decision to take the Dixie out of the attraction that had been called Dixie Stampede rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Dixie is part of my heritage. Your protestors voiced their concerns outside. What is now called Dolly Parton Stampede? Basically, what happened is, like if you look at a lot of the different counter protests that were happening in response to statues being removed across the country, you see a lot of the same faces, the same groups. They're sort of on a circuit going from place to place. And when the name change was announced, some of those same protesters. "Nobro, y'all have bowed down to PC Bulgrap." They diverted their travel plans, came to pitch and forged. "We came too far to be knocked back down into this." Did their thing? The people there say the term Dixie refers to the South and is spiked in the Civil War. And all of a sudden? "You are attempting to rewrite history." "No, no, we are not trying to rewrite history." Dolly's now Dixie Stampede. "I'm turning to beat Warp Reader!" Was all wrapped up in that larger drama. Now this was a very much a national conversation with a lot of different groups on the outside weighing in. And we were sort of curious to know just like what do people in the area think about this? But before we could even have that thought or ask that question, we got a call. "I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, I the people for the people who's just powers are derived from the consent of the government." We got a call from a woman. I'm Evelyn Miller. who told us that that she was related to Dali. - She's my fourth cousin. - Can you kind of step through that? - Evelyn happens to be a regent at the Andrew Bogle chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I've been in the DAI are probably 12 years but I stepped out for a while because of. So the DAI, she calls it, is a group whose members have to trace back their lineage to someone who either supported or fought in the American Revolutionary War back in 1775, 6.7. After one of their monthly meetings, Evelyn went with Jad and me and she immediately whipped out her phone. - Okay, okay. - Okay, now here we come down. - And open this genealogy app. - Oh wait, here we go. - Okay, see, it says you're fourth cousin. - It says Dali Parn is possible you're fourth cousin. Okay. - Okay, now Catherine Powell, who married the bowhannon. - So Catherine Powell, ACO-7-T293. - Which makes us not removed at all. Catherine Powell is Dali's fourth great grandmother. - She tried to walk me through the sequence of connections but it was felt like trigonometry. - They had Betsy Elizabeth. - And by the way, could you repeat that? - Evelyn was not the only one there claiming a Dali link. We met another guy named Art. - Two of these daughters married two of the obos again on her and they had lots of children. - Who also claimed that he was Dali's fourth cousin. - My granddaughter is friends with Dali's great niece and they have sleepovers. It seems like everybody in this region has a connection to Dali or says they do. - Well, yes, so it would seem. - In any case, we had chicken and brownies. We watched a presentation about the history of Scotland and since these are people who obsess about history and lineage, after lunch, we sort of turn the conversation to the subject of the stampede. - I don't think that she should have changed the name. As I was growing up. - A little week ago, everyone said no. - You can't, please say no. - Don't change the name. - No, no, no. - No, no, no. - You think she should have changed the name. - My family was from the union side. - And you were from the union side. - So, lowly, they weren't confederates. East Tennessee was mostly union. - One of the interesting wrinkles about having this debate in East Tennessee is that this part of Tennessee was initially pro-union during the Civil War. They were annexed by the Confederacy unwillingly. So there's a very independent, like don't tell me whose team I'm on. I'm on my own team. Don't confuse me with the rest of the South or anyone else kind of vibe that you get when you talk to people here. And it's partly for that reason. That most of the people at the table with us, the tenor-so people we were talking to. - That's lag. - You're talking about Dixie Stampede, the statue, everything else. - They found the whole idea that you would erase a word to make someone else, somewhere else, feel better, kind of irritating. They were okay for 150 years, and now all of a sudden they're no good. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. I think it's people's choice. - Are you willing to fight in a civil war for it? The right to protect my country? - For my country, yes. My ancestors did it. I guess I have to do it too. If it came to that, I'm sorry. - But not everybody felt that way. - What's coming to my mind in this discussion is when you know better, you're supposed to do better. Times were different back then. Times are changing. Dolly felt that she needed to change the name. - But you know, all these things were okay for 150 years. And how far are you going to go? - Right. - That's Pew and the church in Alexandria that was Washington's Pew. - A historic Virginia church will remove a memorial plaque honoring America's first president. - It took us name on it. - Washington and Jefferson are on that rush more. They own slaves. Should we take them down? - We're going to change history. Are we going to tear out the statues down? If we tear the statues down, then we need to burn all the history books. - The critics, I think, would agree with you that the reason they wanted her to change it is that the actual story being told in it was itself changing history or not acknowledging history. - We have to acknowledge history. We have to acknowledge who we've been. - Here, the conversation started to feel a bit familiar and sort of like one of those mobious strips, those weird shapes that kind of you go in and out and in and out and around and you're never quite sure which side of the shape you're on. One person would say, "We shouldn't erase history." - And then someone else would jump in and say, "That's not what's happening here." These statues and monuments and memorials were all put up long after the Civil War was over, mostly during the Jim Crow era. If anything, these things themselves are an attempt to rewrite history. Which seems to have worked by the way if you look at surveys that have been done on this. - When people were asked, "What do they think the main cause of the Civil War is? 48% said mainly about states' rights. Only 38% said mainly about slavery." - I mean, it's just a fact. The Civil War was fought to end slavery. Clearly, we have a deep problem in this country if a majority of Americans don't think that. And you could argue that these monuments, and even things like the Dixie Stampede, which staged the Civil War as kind of like a pillow fight. - There's a danger to it, and you're teaching kids a particular sanitized version of history. - That was scholar Patricia Davis again, by the way. - And if you grew up with the Dolly Parton version of it, you would be very difficult to understand the divides that we have now. - Okay, so a question to break. In our first interview, we talked really briefly about the situation with the Stampede. So now that we're sort of looking back on it, can you explain your thinking behind changing the name and what do you feel like you learned from that experience? - Well, there's several reasons that we changed the name, or a few reasons. Maybe I should say a couple reasons. One being that out of ignorance people do things you don't know. A lot of my things that I do wrong are just out of pure ignorance, really, because you grow up in a certain way and you don't know. The Dixie, we always thought way down in the land of Dixie, it's like a Dixie land, a Dixie land music, Dixie. I just thought of Dixie as a part of America. And it was offensive, 'cause like I say, out of ignorance you don't know that you're hurting people, never thought about it being about slavery or any of that. But when it was brought to our attention and some woman wrote about it, and I thought, well Lord, how mercy I would never want to hurt anybody for any reason. And being a business woman, we didn't really have that many people say anything about it, but I thought Lord, if I've offended one person, as a business woman, I don't wanna do that. So we completely cleared all that out and started over that. But I just wanted to fix it, 'cause I don't wanna ever hurt or offend anyone. And so I did it as a good faith effort to show that it was never meant to cause anyone any pain. - Sitting there, I thought back to our conversation with Aisha Harris, who had been wondering. - Honestly, I'm just curious, that's like, does she really, like did she understand where I was coming from? - So it sounds like you heard the criticism in you. - I hear any criticism. I hear it, 'cause if it's hurt somebody, I'm certainly not about that. But then the name changed. We are planning to be, we do have other Dixie, we have other stampede, now they're just calling it dolly stampede, or just the stampede, but we're actually gonna be all over, possibly all over the world with that. So it just made more sense, 'cause we have those beautiful horses, just to have the word stampede, and it wasn't like a location. So it really, in my mind, it was a business choice as well. - She said that one of the main reasons for the change, and this I didn't see coming, was that they wanna expand. - We were looking at expansion in a couple of other areas, one of the West Coast, one in Southwest. - I talked briefly with Pete about this too. He said one of the things that happened is they started to see research that showed that nationally, internationally, the awareness of Dixie. Dixie's brand awareness, if you will, is shrinking rapidly. - So in order to be able to continue to expand our business, that's why the decision was made. - Okay, so going back to dolly. - Yeah. - Sitting with her talking about this. - That moment was really interesting for me, because when she said, "I don't wanna hurt people," I thought, "Yes, I get it." Everything I have known of her in the last two years of interviewing her tells me that is true. This is not somebody who ever wants to hurt somebody. All the molecules of her being seem to be aligned in that direction. So I think that's why people are called to her. But there's also that other aspect of dolly, which is a laser-focused pragmatic business person, and both of those things were there so powerfully in that one moment, and I was like, "Wow, I'm not used to seeing these two things in the same person in this way." - I don't think personally that you can have a game about the Civil War without talking about all of it, all the ugly parts too, 'cause we're still fighting it on so many levels, but I trust that if people say they are hurt, she will listen, and she will maybe change it again. I don't know. Speaking of which, you know what's funny is a couple days ago, I called up Pete again. I didn't record this call because it was just a fact check and I just asked, "Have you guys discussed or just thought about just removing North and South? Just taking out the thorns of this thing, keep the competition, the horses, the beautiful people and the pigs, we love the pigs. But just take out North and South, protect themselves, protect the future, it would help everything." No, but then I asked him, you know, are the, just to check, are the costumes still red and blue and he said, "Actually they've changed." I said, "They've changed again?" And he said, "Yeah, they're red and green." I was like, "Red and green, why are they red and green?" And he said, "Shima, Christmas, North Pole versus South Pole." That's what they're doing now? Yep. "Mother, mother, everybody starvin' mother, mother, let's eat." Hold your horses, got a million courses and I'm fixing my treats. Is it true that you are right now having a Christmas party but you stepped out of your own Christmas party to sit in a car and take our call? Yeah, it's fine. Listen, I love what you're doing and to me it would be amazing if we could get the most of the party up there. It's a radically shift to moon one more time, literally minutes. Maybe not minutes, but less than a day before our deadline we became aware of a situation developing in my home state of Tennessee involving a Republican state representative. So my name is Jeremy Fason. I'm the Tennessee state representative for the 11th House District that's Cot, Green and Jefferson County. The reason we called representative Fason, dragged him out of his own party that he was having at his house in the Smokies is because of a dolly related statement he made a couple days ago that went a little viral to set it up. In Tennessee, each year, the governor must by law sign a proclamation honoring six notable figures. Three of them happened to be Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and a guy named Nathan Bedford Forest. Nathan Bedford Forest is a former Confederate general. He was also heavily involved with the KKK. He is widely believed to be the first grand wizard of the KKK. Not only does he have his own proclamation day every year, but his bronze bust is one of eight busts placed in the hallowed alcoves of the Tennessee state legislature. He was never put in our capital until 1978. Wow. We put him there after Jim Crow. And in 1980, the grand wizard of the KKK came to our capital and had a press conference in front of the bust of Nathan Bedford Forest. Oh my God. Over my years in Nashville, I've seen every year my fellow friends and legislators that African American. It brings enormous amount of grief to him. It's been a controversy for a while, but for years, he says he was the guy who would say, "Guess, how about let's just preserve history, some of our history is ugly." He met Jesus before he died and got right. I was very, I defended him. Then he says, "One day about two years ago, one of my friends from Memphis is a legislator. He came up to me and said, "Have you ever actually read any of the writings and newspaper clippings from that time?" And I was, be honest, I never had. And he brought him to my office. And as I read him, it tore me up. What did you read? Well, the first thing I read was the Fort Pillar massacre. And what is that? Well, that's where a group of Union soldiers, who the majority were African American men, surrendered in peace. And they basically put them in a log cabin and said it on fire. Oh my God. It was pretty disincent. It was horrible. He helped in the formation of the KKK. I was grieved. I have a bi-racial son and I was like, "Man, that's pretty bad. And then I'm thinking, well, we have eight alcoves. That's the most prestigious spot in all of Tennessee, to honor a Tennessee. And I have a bi-racial son and I have a daughter. And I started thinking to myself, "Wait a minute. If we're going to preserve history, why aren't we preserving all of history? Why is there seven white guys and only one African American?" That's not representative of who we are in Tennessee. We're a very loving and diverse state. We're a bigger state than that. At the minimum, rotate these buss out of here and bring more buss in. And at one time I actually told a reporter, the majority of the people who built the state capital were slaves, could not one of our alcoves benefit them. And then I started thinking, "But I'd really love to see a woman." And one of my first thoughts was somebody like Dolly Parton. And why do you think her? In my opinion, Dolly Parton is a Tennessee treasure. But even more than that, Dolly Parton is a national treasure. I could start with all five of my kids have benefited from her drive to end the literacy and imagination library. Oh my goodness, it's an amazing thing. At Dollywood, all of my children have gone to her imagination library and watched those books, those story books come to life. So Representative Fason made the suggestion to be a text to a reporter at the Tennessee Inn, said, "Hey, I think we should replace the bus to the first grand wizard of the KKK was someone like Dolly Parton." The reporter then wrote the story and that article really just in the last day or so. He's gotten picked up by tons of national media. And now it seems at least plausible that when the Historical Committee that decides which bus should and shouldn't be in the alcoves of the State Legislature, when they meet in January, it seems at least plausible that they will consider this. I'm hoping our Historical Commission at the Capitol will do the right thing. Let me ask you, from your position, advocating for taking Nathan Bedford Forest out of the Legislature, is that an easy position for you to take or alonely one? Obviously, I have some colleagues who are not at all in agreement with me. Some of my colleagues say, "Hey, I wish you wouldn't have said that." And not at all trying to be offensive to anybody who loves our Confederate veterans. The truth is, I am a son of a Confederate veteran. If you look in history, you'll find a man by the name of Paul Fason. Paul Fason was actually at Appomattox with Robert E Lee. And I hold dear to the truth of everything that took place in our Civil War, and I want that preserved. I want to make sure we never repeat that again. But I think we can preserve history, tell the truth about history, but also preserve history in such a way that everybody gets included. And our state's the best-managed state in America. I mean, we've got some great things to be excited about. And this, just to me, is one of the things that we don't have anything to be excited about with this. Let's put some way in there like Dolly Parton that we could be excited about. [Music] Listen, I want to thank you for taking time out of your Christmas party to talk to us. Hey, God bless you, Merry Christmas. Likewise. Well, there you go. Dolly Parton's America was produced, written and edited by Meet and Shima Oliai brought to you by Awesome Audio, OSM Audio and WNYC Studios, with production help from W. Harry Fortuna. Thanks to our bluegrass trio, Steph Jenkins, Stephanie Coleman and Courtney Hartman, and also thanks to the folks Sony Music and to Lynn Sacco, David Dotson, Lulu Miller, Susie Lecht and Brooks, Doran Wheeler, Sam Shahi, Faith Held and Joel Ebert. Just a reminder, we have partnered with Apple Music to bring you a companion playlist that's updated each week with music you hear in this episode plus some of our favorites. You can find all of that at DollyPartonsAmerica.org. Stay tuned. December 31st, we will deliver the final episode of Dolly Partons America. Here's a preview. One last question, just to bring it back to the day. Yes, it's going so good though. I mean, if you had to give the final concert, the concert. What would be the last song? Well the song I close my show with always and probably always will. Do you have a vision for the next 10 years, for the next 20 years, like 100 years? Yes. I'm gone. There's enough stuff to go on forever. We'll close out the series talking with Dolly about her faith and her future. That's on the final episode of Dolly Partons America in two weeks. WNYC's journalism and storytelling is heard by millions of passionate listeners, sponsors of our programming gain our listeners attention and their respect. What about how your organization can support WNYC and WNYC studios at sponsorship.wnyc.org.