Dixie Disappearance

Dollyverse. This one, well, if our sort of throughline idea for the series is that Dolly is a kind of great unifier. This is kind of where things get a little hard. Maybe here if we're talking about, you know, America from a Dolly's I view, we get the full on quivering mass of irreconcilable contradictions. That's Professor Nadine Hubs again, University of Michigan, Jolene 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's putting it a little to dramatically considering that the this that she's talking

“about involves racing pigs. That's what Nadine is referring to is a place.”

A place of business. As you drive into Dollywood, which Sheema and I did, with another Dolly ologist, Allie Tiki, it's starting to get mountainous. For a while, it's all smokey mountains, and then you pull on the pigeon forge. Wow, this is a little bit like starting to run me a Vegas. It's like the Vegas chair, I didn't expect that. You're really Vegas. That's Allie.

When you roll on the pigeon forge, you drive along this mile of nightclubs and dinner theaters.

It's very sparkly, very neon. You have a giant skyscraper, and Godzilla hanging off. Dolly's name isn't Blazing Dawn 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 a stampede. Dolly part is Dixie Stampede. Call 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 or 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. What? I love the car, right? I'm not sure. I think it'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. Hey, there are literally hundreds of recordings on YouTube. So we're going to use a few of this just to give you a sense of how it goes. Okay, okay. So basically, 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 the arena seats all around. It's like going to the

rodeo basically. It's like going to the rodeo. It's like a tonnager in the center of this massive oval.

“How many seats was it again? It was 1000. Welcome to Dolly Parton Stampede. And the whole”

can seat of this situation. Beside the eating, a tremendous amount of food. I mean, a full chicken and a pork line and some soup that has a lot of cumin and a biscuit. It was a lot of food. Besides that, you quickly find out you are 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 Steve,

the leader here, what they just called you. He encourages each side to gear at the other. So it was like fighting towards the main end, and then it's a year old. He asks you to kind of gear at them, and then he goes to the south side and he tells the south side. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, he goes to the south side and he tells the south side. Ain't nothing but a bunch of fouls, smell like gold. They give pigs,

lot of bird drop, whole cans. Couldn't put it here. We had a wet paper bag. I get there right now. And then all of a sudden, 12 riders on a horseback storm into the arena. Half of the meringue ride and half of the meringue blue. Ready to south blue is north. They start zipping around the ring. They look gorgeous. They're waving.

riding, then jumping off, flipping down into the sand, and then jumping back onto the horse.

“It was, I was, 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 jouses underway. A cowboy jouse, a cowboy jouse. Kids from each side, they chase chickens at one point. The pigs come out, little piglets with keeps, race across the arena. R's were quite mighty. And then he realized you're eating pork.

And then, let me just talk to the weirdness of it all. Like, you are watching this, you are

pounding lemonade. Yeah. They're serving you lemonade in these giant, gallant-sized, cup-shaped, like boots, and you're drinking gallant-illeminate. The sugar is hitting your bloodstream,

“and you're flying. But 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. You know, in terms of Civil War, the tourist imaginary would be, you know, the Antebellum South, you know, the huge plantation houses, the flowery bells, the, you know, the noble gentleman. And, you know, everybody's happy. There is no slavery. There is no discussion

“of exactly what exploitation 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 at one location, a giant plantation backdrop. Southern bells, dancing, and big skirts, writers for the South would come out and uniforms that were Confederate gray, writers for the North would be a union blue. And there were even signs over the bathrooms that said, Northerners only Southerners only. In the show, we saw those notes were a little more muted,

but troubling thoughts would enter the mind. But any time they did, boom, explosion. It's brilliant theatre. This is Classics Professor Helen Morellis. She wrote about the finale of the Dixie Stampede in her book Pilgrimage to Dollywood. There was a collective gas but the beauty of the spectacle. Before the audience could reflect upon the results of their civil conflict. The grand finale erupted in a crescendo of patriotism.

Horses counted information with their writers wearing lighted costumes, red, white and blue, and waving the American flag. Are you proud to be an American? Boom the MC. A super-sized image of a resplendent, red, white and blue dolly pattern that fills the entire screen at the end of the stadium responded no more, no south, no east, no west. But 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. There'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 bus in the movie '95. You know, wait and the stone supporter of LGBTQ. And this other idea of Dolly that she encountered in the south,

You know, as Nadine Hub said at the beginning Dolly can pull off contradictions that no one else can

pull off. But then... I was 12, 2017. You're looking at live pictures out of Charlottesville, Virginia. This is where violent clashes have broken out between white nationalist and counter protest there. 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 Klats clan and

neo-Nazi. Gather to defend the statue, things to reveal it almost immediately. One person is dead in 19 injured after speeding vehicle drove into a group of protesters marching peacefully through downtown Charlottesville. And suddenly, this conversation was given bubbling for a while burst out

“onto the national stage. Questions 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. Baltimore's mayor ordered the city's four Confederate monuments removed. And in the midst of all of this rethinking and taking down of monuments, hello. Is this Ayesha? Yep, this Ayesha. A woman named Ayesha Harris, a New York-based writer who worked at Slate at the time. She was on Slack. This is in the days after

Charlottesville. And one of her colleagues, message saying, "Hey, have you heard about this thing that Dalai Parton does down in Pigeon Forge?" Just kind of escalated from there. It was like, holy crap, like, why did I not know this? I love Dalai Parton, 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 of the bathroom saying

Northern Ristuffiners 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. That'll help you. We call that. Writing that Santa Claus. Oh, that was the new. 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 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 and hell. There was one, I can't remember exactly what I said, but it's sort of implied something about my family and I said, okay, this is getting a little weird. One of the things that people kept saying was it this is like the treats and emails, you know, it's not a part and it's done more for other people

than you could ever imagine you could do. She's still related money to this called the soft, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the thing about is that I wrote a piece as a dolly fan. Did you go up with her music? I didn't go up with her music, but then you know, I watched nine to five, for the first time, I read about her and she's such as she's been, she's such a smart business woman.

“I think that's something to celebrate until it took kind of look up to.”

I just says that she just wanted to point out that even amazing people have blind spots.

For not that long after about what the wind came out, so I can understand why that sort of love this fake southern identity, I can see how that could creep a delay into her work, but it's 2017 now and it baffled me that 30 years later, this show still exists. Well, I mean, it's something that we're talking about for a number of years. This is Pitoans. The Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations for dollarwood,

before we just start just to sort of like, because we're on the radio, there's a lot of sound. It's good sound. I like the sound. It's nice to be on the dance. Where are we? We're sitting in the lower lobby of dollarwoods, drew more resortant spa, adjacent to the dollarwood theme park. Gotcha. According to Pete, they had already been talking about making some changes,

even before I used to start to call him out. So we started to talk about it a couple of years ago. You had heard criticism play, 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.

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. The discussions were, does that really describe us?

“Moving forward is, you know, is this 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 gray 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, just to remove a dixie from the name.

Partner nouns, the show is dropping the word "dixie" from its name. dolly partens "dixie" stampede got rid of the "dixie" and is now dolly partens 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 fort,”

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. Cruz, I've 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 like 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 a 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 it. dolly partens America will continue in a moment.

Although the justice department has published thousands of pages of the Epstein files, the quest for accountability goes on. There are huge pages of redactions that involve descriptions of activity by other

possible co-conspirators, whether they be powerful men, we don't know because they're all blacked out.

On this week's "On the Media" from WNYC, find on the media wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dalai Pernse America, Chad Sheema, picking back up with the story, dolly and her team announced her 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 Stampine rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Dixie's part of my heritage. Your protestors' voice there concerns outside what is now called Dalai Pernse Stampine. 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 of 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, you all have bowed down the PC bullcraft." They diverted their travel plans, came to pigeon forage. "We came too far to be knocked back down into this."

"Did there think?" "Many of the people there say the term Dixie refers to the south, and it's spite in the civil war." "In all of a sudden, you are attempting to rewrite history." "No, no, we are not trying to rewrite history." Dalai's now Dixie Stampine 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

“wing, 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, of the people, for the people whose just powers are derived from the content of the government." "We got a call from a woman." "I'm Evelyn Miller, who told us that she was related to Dalai." "She's my fourth cousin." "Can you kind of step through that, so what?"

Evelyn happens to be a region at the Andrew Vogelchapter of the daughters of the American Revolution.

so the D.A.R. as 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 1775-67.”

After one of their monthly meetings, Evelyn met with Chad 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, I say it says you're fourth cousin." "Don't, it says Dalai porn is possibly your fourth cousin." "Okay, okay, now Katherine Powell, who married the bow-handen." "So Katherine Powell, I say, was 17293," which makes us note not removed at all. Katherine Powell is Dalai'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 Dalai link. We met another guy named Art.

"To if he's daughter's married to the obelts again, I'm her, and they had lots of children." "Who also claimed that he was Dalai's fourth cousin?" "My grand daughter is friends with Dalai's

“great names, and they have sleep hovers." "It seems like everybody in this region”

has a connection to Dalai 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, everyone say, "I don't change the name. I don't change the name."

"No, no, you think she should have changed the name." "I can't believe it's from my new name." "And you are from the union." "They weren't confederation." "As Tennessee was mostly union." "What are 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 who's

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 ten or so people we were talking to? That flag. You're talking about it. It's like the statues and 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. Are you willing to fight in a civil war for it?”

The right to protect my country? Yes, my ancestors did it. I guess I have to do it too. If it came to that. 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. Dolley fell 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? That's Pew and the church in Alexandria that was Washington's Pew.

And historic Virginia church will remove a memorial plaque honoring America's first president. It took us name Washington and Jefferson are on that rush more. They own slaves. Look, should we take them down? Are we going to change here? Are we going to tie all the statues down? Have we tied all the statues down? We need to learn 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 what 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 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 are 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,

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, it would be very difficult to understand the divides that we have now.

Okay, so 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 like, what do you feel like you learned from that experience?”

Well, there's several reasons that we changed our few reasons. Maybe I should say a couple of reasons. One being that out of ignorance, people do things you don't know. A lot of my things that I do wrong, just out of pure ignorance, really. Because you grow up a certain way and you don't know.

The Dixie, we always thought, wait down in the land of Dixie, you know, it's like a Dixie land,

a Dixie land music, Dixie, you know, I just thought Dixie as a part of a, you know, part of America. And it was offensive, you know, because like I say out of ignorance, you don't know that you're hurting people, never thought about it being, you know, 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, have mercy, I will 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 have offended one person, as a business woman, I don't want to do that. So we completely cleared all that out and started over that. But we, I just wanted to fix it because I don't want to 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.

“I don't think I'm just curious. I still like, does she really, like, did she understand where I was coming from?”

So it sounds like you hear, you heard the criticism. I hear any criticism. I hear it because if it's hurt somebody, I'm certainly not about that. But then the name change, we are planning to be, we do have other dixie. We either have other stampede, now they're just calling it dollars stampede or just the stampede. But we're actually going to be all over, possibly all over the world with that.

So it just made more sense because we have those beautiful horses just to have the words 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 in this I didn't see coming was that they want to expand. We were looking and expansion a couple of other areas, one of the West Coast, one of the 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.

And dixie's brand awareness, if you will, is shrinking rapidly. So in order to be able to continue expanding our business, that's why the decision was written. Okay, so going back to dollars, sitting with her talking about this. And that moment was really interesting for me. Like because when she said, I don't want to 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

“seemed to be aligned in that direction. And I think that's why people are called to her.”

But there's also that other aspect of dollars, 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. Because 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. In a 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, 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,

It would help everything. And he said, no. But then, I asked him, you know, or the just to check,

“are the costumes still red and blue? And he said, actually, they've changed. I said, they 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, shema, Christmas, North Pole versus South Pole. That's what they're doing now? Yep. I'm about to serve a Christmas standard country style. Is it, 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, if we could get the bus to die part and up there. So just to radically shift the 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 Facing. I'm the Tennessee state representative for the Levent House District that's caught green in Jefferson County. The reason we called representative Facing 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 of 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 Lee, Jefferson Davis, and a guy named Nathan Bedford Forrest. Nathan Bedford Forrest 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 Forrest. Yeah, 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 them. It's been a controversy for a while, but for years he says he was the guy who would say, "Guys, how about let's just preserve history, some of our history's ugly?" He met Jesus before

he died and got right and I was very, I defended him. Then he says one day about two years ago, one of my friends, from Memphis as 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 had 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 Pill of 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, it was pretty distant, it was, it was horrible. He helped in the formation of the KKK. I was great to have a buy racial son and I was like, "Man, that's, 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 Tennessee and I have a buy racial son and I have a daughter and I started thinking myself, wait a minute, if we're going to preserve history, why don't we preserve in 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. Let's say, at the minimum

rotate these bust out of here and bring more bust in and at one time I actually told our reporter, you know, the majority of the people who built this 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?

national treasure. I could start with all five of my kids have benefited from her, from her

her drive to indeliteracy and the imagination library. Oh my goodness, it's an amazing thing in

it. Dollywood, all of my children have gone to her imagination library and watched those books, those story books come to life. So Reverson and Fason made this suggestion be a text to a reporter

“at the Tennesseean. Said, hey, I think we should replace the bust of the first grand wizard of the”

KKK with someone like Dolly Parton. The reporter then wrote the story and that article really just in the last day or so has gotten picked up by tons of national media and now it it seems at least plausible that when the historical committee that decides which busts 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

capital will do the right thing. Let me ask you, uh, from your position, advocating for taking Nathan Bedford Forest out of the legislature. Is that an easy position for you to take or a lonely one? Obviously, I have some colleagues who are not at all an 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 athletics with Robert E. Lee. And I hold dear to the truth of everything that took place in our

civil war and I won't that preserve. I want to make sure we never repeat that again. But I think we

can preserve history until 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 away in there like Dally important”

that we could be excited about. Listen, I want to thank you for taking time out of your Christmas party to talk to us. Hey, god bless your Merry Christmas. But likewise. Well, there you go. Dally Barnes America was produced, written and edited by me and she'm Oliye 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 Dots and Lulu Miller, Susie Lecton Brooks, Lauren 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 dollypartnsamerica.org. Stay tuned, December 31st, we will deliver the final episode of dollypartnsamerica. Here's a preview. One last question,

just to bring it back to you. Yeah, it's going so good though. I mean, if you had, if you had to give the final concert, the concert. What would be the last song? Well, the song I kind of

Michelle 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, when I'm gone, there's enough stuff to go on forever. We'll close out the series talking with dollypartnsamerica and her future. That's on the final episode of dollypartnsamerica in two weeks.