Was Dolly Parton the Last Person America Agreed On?

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And join Michael Smerconish right here in the middle.

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This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:57)
I want to begin with this. You've heard of the full Ginsburg. You know the full Ginsburg. I'm not talking Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I'm not talking Douglas Ginsburg. Good trivia. Why did Douglas Ginsburg not make it to the Supreme Court of the United States? Arguably for a reason that today would not have stood in his way. But no, I'm talking about William Ginsburg. He was the lawyer for the intern in the Clinton scandal. It was February 1, 1998, at the height of that scandal, that Bill Ginsburg did something that nobody had ever done before. And that is he appeared on all five Sunday morning programs on the same morning. Meet the press. Face the nation. This week, Fox News Sunday, CNN's late edition, five networks, one lawyer, one story. And ever since, they've called it the full Ginsburg.
I was thinking about Bill Ginsburg yesterday in the afternoon, because in the afternoon, I was working out. I have a small gym in my home. I have Apple TV there, as I do here in our studio. And I've got the Quad, where I can look at MS Now, Fox News, CNN and the BBC, which I really love. But I was on the rower TC as this happened. It was Fox News that first had the story.
And then it was MS Now.
And then it was the BBC. And I kept waiting, like CNN is a little slow on the draw on this. And then CNN had it as well. And all four at the same time had the passing of Dolly Parton. And not only did they have it as I was on the rower, they stayed with it.

**TC Cannon** (2:40)
They stayed with it. And it wasn't just the cable news outlets. I, you know, have a habit of watching the nightly news. And I find it very interesting to see what they choose to do in their one half hour that they have three segments on Dolly Parton last night on CBS Evening News. Three segments. I, of course, absolutely loved her and have been singing nine to five nonstop since I heard the news blasting it.
But I, I'm not sure I realized how universal she was to seemingly everyone of every political. You're always looking for this, Michael. You're always looking for something that brings everyone together.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:16)
That's what I'm going to talk about. I mean, yeah, she did it. She did it. Really, really unique. A singular force in that in that coverage that I referenced, you know, one by one, they all played the announcement. The announcement came by video. I'm going to roll just 20 seconds of it, and it was made by her nephew. Let's watch.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:35)
Hey, everyone. My name is Brian Seaver, son of Cassie Parton, and I'm representing the Parton and Owens family today. Announcing the passing of my Aunt Dolly, Rebecca Parton Dean. Sister, sis, Aunt Granny to one generation and Gigi to the next.
This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago before I fully absorbed it as a future reality. As her head of security for more than two decades, a role my father, Larry, held before me, I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven't truly felt it until now.

**Michael Smerconish** (4:06)
Yeah, amazing the way that they handled it. I thought with such dignity. And just think about the news cycle. It's not exactly been a slow news cycle. The Canadian tariff issue, huge issue. We're going to deal with that appropriately tomorrow. The war with Iran, CIA Director Ratcliffe in Russia, the new CTE study pertaining to NFL players, everything got moved. Here's another indicator of the size of this story and the attention of the media. One of the bookmarks that I have on my computer where I'm looking constantly to see what's going on as I decide what's going in my newsletter and what will I talk about both here on SiriusXM POTUS and on CNN is Google Trends. Because I get it, you know, I'm out of touch in some segments of culture and society and I don't want to miss something that people are buzzing about. Often sports stories dominate what's getting the most buzz in terms of Google Trends. So in ascending order, very early this morning when I did my read, Jamar Chase, The Injury, Little Debbie, New Chocolates collaboration, I don't know what that is. The Astros and Yankees, The Dodgers and Braves, each of them in the 100,000 search volume range. Dolly Parton, 10 million, 10 million. That puts it in perspective in terms of what's the online buzz. The president ordered American flags lowered to half staff and for a week, that's until sunset on November 1st. Every federal building, every military installation, every American embassy on earth, to put that in perspective, I went looking for instances where this has been done for private citizens. I found Martin Luther King Jr. I found Rosa Parks. I found Neil Armstrong. I found Billy Graham. The only entertainer that I could find who received that type of treatment having passed was Bob King. Pardon me, was Bob Hope. Was Bob Hope for a single day. For a single day. Charlie Kirk got four days. Remember that last September? Dolly Parton gets seven. No other private citizen entertainer in our history who's given that honor. And you know the line, I'm not sure who said it initially, that everything has been said, but not everybody has said it. I do have something I want to say about Dolly Parton. TC, of course, knew where I would want to go on this. In a word, the monoculture, the monoculture, the death of the monoculture, the shared understanding and the shared experience that's so lacking today in society. I like to use television shows to illustrate what I'm talking about. February 1983, MASH signs off and draws a 77 share.