BS BULLETIN:
- Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed used his Dolly Parton tribute to praise her focus on “poverty, inequality, and struggle.”
- The post was quickly overwhelmed by critics accusing the progressive candidate of hijacking Parton’s death for politics.
- One critic called him a “pandering buffoon.” Another had an even simpler message: “Stay away from her.”
Dolly Parton spent decades doing something increasingly rare in American celebrity culture:
She refused to tell half the country to go to hell.
Then she died — and politicians started arriving.
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed posted his tribute Tuesday, praising Parton for using her music “to highlight the challenges of poverty, inequality, and struggle in ways that uplifted and inspired working people.” He followed that with lyrics from her autobiographical classic “Coat of Many Colors.”
The internet was not feeling the love.
El-Sayed’s post was quickly ratioed as critics accused the progressive Democrat of turning Dolly into a political prop.
Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross wrote on X that he never expected anyone would “politicize Dolly Parton’s death.”
Senate Leadership Fund’s Chloe Smith was considerably more concise:
“Stay away from her.”
Another account delivered perhaps the cleanest review of the whole performance:
“Pandering buffoon.”
Conservative writer Debbie Schlussel went further, mocking El-Sayed as a privileged politician pretending to identify with working-class struggle and questioning whether he even knew the Dolly lyrics before posting them.
The reason the tribute struck such a nerve isn’t difficult to understand.
Parton was famously determined not to become a political mascot.
“I’m not in politics. I’m an entertainer,” she once explained when asked about her refusal to endorse candidates or take political sides.
That didn’t mean Dolly didn’t care about poor people.
Quite the opposite.
She grew up dirt poor in Tennessee and then spent a fortune actually helping people — most famously through her Imagination Library, which has distributed hundreds of millions of books to children.
She just managed to do it without demanding to see their voter registration cards first.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, is running a highly competitive Senate campaign in Michigan and has spent this week under intense national scrutiny as he tries to broaden his appeal beyond the progressive left.
So perhaps transforming America’s famously apolitical country sweetheart into a talking point about “inequality” wasn’t going to pass unnoticed.
DBS WIRE SOURCES
- El-Sayed’s tribute to Dolly Parton sparks internet fury: ‘Gimme a break’ — Fox News
- Abdul El-Sayed’s Dolly Parton Tribute: Why Is He Facing Backlash? — Hollywood Life
- El-Sayed seeks to focus on affordability amid scrutiny from both sides — The Guardian
