She is one of the greatest musical geniuses in any genre, both as a singer and a songwriter. She has made me cry more than any other artist I know. I would walk three miles through a raging blizzard to hear her sing "three blind mice". (Which might be a pretty good song for her, being a tale of domestic violence in a rural setting.) She is a shrewd businessperson, and an effective and benevolent philanthropist.

But she is the one who deliberately cultivated the tit jokes, and she tells the best ones. For example when they dedicated the Dolly Parton parkway to her in her home town of Severeville, she said at the dedication ceremony " I don't know why they named it for me, it's as flat as a board." And there is of course, that classic joke about the fire department that you quote. Those jokes are a pretty small part of my thoughts about her. But as long as she continues to make them, I’m going to laugh.

When someone asked her if she was worried that people would see her as a joke, she said "I am a joke. But the joke's on them, not me."