When Someone Talks Down to You
Great article on the news wire. Starts with an interview between Barbara Walters and Dolly Parton, and goes from there: Nearly half a century ago, Parton did a now-famous interview with Barbara Walters, one of the most prominent journalists on television at the time. Walters asked all of the cutting questions to Parton’s face that people had been whispering behind her back: about her clothes, her figure, and even her breasts. She also pushed on Parton’s lower-class background. “Dolly,” she began. “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.” I call Parton’s move the “label upgrade” strategy, and it’s a wa...
