News/Commentary

WaPo columnist drags Dolly Parton into politics — gets a basic fact about her life WRONG

August 27, 2026 | | Print Article

The Washington Post, known by critics as the Washington Puke, is getting reamed for publishing a fake take about the late Dolly Parton.

Parton, who died Tuesday, suffered from endometriosis, a condition that can greatly hamper a woman’s fertility.

“More than four decades ago, Parton announced she had been diagnosed with endometriosis, a debilitating reproductive condition that causes tissues similar to those found in a woman’s uterus to grow elsewhere in the body,” according to the Daily Mail.

“This excess tissue causes excruciatingly painful periods, excess bleeding and, for up to half of those with the condition, infertility,” the Daily Mail reported.

Then in 1984, Parton underwent a partial hysterectomy to remove her uterus in a bid to reduce her endometriosis symptoms.

“[T]his meant she would never be able to become pregnant and have her own children,” the Daily Mail noted.

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Yet to hear the Post tell it, Parton didn’t have children solely because she didn’t want them.

“Dolly Parton’s lack of children demonstrated that the world could in fact love a woman who wasn’t a mother,” the Post claimed in a tweet Wednesday. “But more importantly, she was proof that a person could be an advocate for children while personally choosing against parenting.”

The tweet linked to a column from Post writer Ashley Fetters Maloy that was just as ridiculous.

“To me, Parton’s lack of children demonstrated that the world could in fact love a woman who wasn’t a mother,” Maloy wrote. “But more importantly, she was proof that a person could be an advocate and friend for children while personally choosing against parenting.”

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But the reality is that Parton had wanted children.

“Early on, when my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids,” she told Billboard magazine in 2014. “We weren’t doing anything to stop it. In fact, we thought maybe we would. We even had names if we did, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

“Now I say, ‘God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine.’ I’m very close to my family — five of my younger brothers and sisters lived with me and Carl for many years — and we’re very close to our nieces and nephews. Now that Carl and I are older, we often say, ‘Aren’t you glad we didn’t have kids? Now we don’t have kids to worry about,'” she added.

Maloy’s column conveniently neglected to mention any of this, and for that, critics were furious.

Look:

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The Post is notorious for its wacky feminist takes, but this may just be the worst of them all.

Vivek Saxena
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