“Dolly,” Barbara Walters asked, “Where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly? … When I think of hillbillies, am I thinking of your kind of people?”
“I think you probably are,” Dolly replied. “But we were very proud people, people with a lot of class. It was country class, but it was a great deal of class. And most of my people were not that educated, but they are very, very intelligent. Good common sense — horse sense, we called it.”
Dorie Clark, the author of this article, calls Parton’s move the “label upgrade” strategy, and it’s a way to simultaneously maintain your dignity and disarm the person who’s talking down to you.
Dolly is neither denying she’s a hillbilly, nor getting mad at what could easily be seen as an insult. Instead, she claims the label and revises what it means.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/31/when-someone-talks-down-use-dolly-partons-simple-trick-maintain-dignity-disarm-communication-expert.html
