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Earlier this month, scrolling the TV channels, I happened upon a documentary about Dolly Parton and started watching. Before long I thought: “Boy, I needed this.”

That evening came at the end of another week of wallowing in all things Donald Trump. It’s my job and, I think, my civic duty. It’s also soul-crushing, as news consumers around the world have learned in the past decade. To instead relax into an hour and 25 minutes of eye-candy video about Dolly — the personification of empathy, generosity and humility — was just the right restorative. I was a young Yankee girl when she became a Southern country music star. My fandom reflected the crossover appeal — across regions, genres, ages, genders, races and, yes, politics — that Dolly earned over six decades, uniquely. And, yes, I will always love her.

Dolly’s death — we’re all on a first-name basis with her, right? — hits Americans all the harder for coming at a time when that other faux-blond 80-year-old is (mis)leading our country and messing with our minds daily, spreading chaos instead of comfort.

On the day she died, President Trump was doing the kind of nasty, selfish, bullying stuff that comes as naturally to him as kindness did to Dolly. For him, just another Tuesday. But for everyone else, a Tuesday suddenly without the Dolly antidote.

That morning, Trump — having reignited a trade war with Canada and demanded that the “clowns” among Canadian leaders “fall in line” — proceeded to........

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