Dolly, Dolly, Dolly, you know I'm a huge fan. I'm thrilled that you're coming out of semi-retirement to appear in the new film, Joyful Noise. But you're breaking my heart here. What did you mean when you said, "We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days" -- ???
That's what preachers and grandparents have been saying for the past 10,000 years! Every generation is more wicked than that last. Why are you jumping on that Stone-Age bandwagon? And when we see that quote in context, why, it gets even worse.
Dolly was talking about why she's in Joyful Noise, and it starts out so positive:
The film is uplifting and I want people to go away feeling better than they did when they got here, because times are hard right now. Everybody's been feeling a little scared and a little down, and the economy has been bad and people don't know what to think. We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.
Ooh, when people talk about hard times and lost morals together, I just think it leans a little too much toward harsh judgement. Yes, the economy still hasn't recovered and we're all suffering because of that. But it's not because ordinary people like you and me have lost our principles! I know that's not exactly what Dolly is saying here, but she lumps the ideas in there together in a way that makes me uncomfortable.
And Dolly of all people should have more compassion. She was raised in a one-room cabin, for crying out loud. No one deserves to be poor -- any more than the righteous deserve to be rich. For that matter, hard times don't necessarily cause people to lose their morals and values. Sometimes the opposite happens. And anyway, I think Americans' values are as strong as ever.
Oh well, at least she lumps herself in with all of us. "We’re all just a bunch of sinners, but we do the best we can," she says, and that sounds a lot more like the Dolly we all know and love. She's just trying to spread some joy with this movie and uplift us all. She says the movie has "got a lot of heart, a lot of soul. It's about community, it's about pulling together and it's about believing in something bigger and better than you." And those are some ideas I can get behind.
Do you agree with what Dolly says about losing our morals and values these days?
Image via Joyful Noise