As if Dolly Parton hadn’t already contributed more than enough to the musical canon, news broke recently that the 74-year-old singer had contributed $1 million in research funds toward the development of Moderna’s 94.5% effective COVID-19 vaccine.
Always relatable, Parton said she was “very proud girl today to know I had anything at all to do with something that’s going to help us through this crazy pandemic.” Not since one legendary sheep was cloned in 1996 has a Dolly contributed so much to modern science, raising the question: Is Parton simply the world’s best celebrity?
Full disclosure: I’ve been a near-obsessive Dolly Parton fan since I first heard her duet on “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers, and my love for the chanteuse has only grown in the years since; “Two Doors Down” is my go-to karaoke song, and perhaps my greatest regret in life is passing up the chance to join a packed car on a college road trip to visit Dollywood. Therefore, I can’t exactly be objective about how Parton stacks up relative to, say, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or other mega-rich humanitarians (although I will note that last time I checked, neither of those men had been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame).
My personal bias aside, it can’t be escaped that Parton has a long history of involving herself with philanthropic causes; her literacy program, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, has helped countless children develop their reading skills, and she’s been on the forefront of HIV/AIDS advocacy for decades.
This COVID-19 donation, though, brings Parton into a whole new stratosphere of charitable giving. What if we were lucky enough to one day be able to say that the pandemic that defined 2020 was partially brought to an end by the woman who famously once said, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap”? Is it too soon to start petitioning to institute “Jolene” as the national anthem?