Scarcely a week ago our friend Dan Flynn wrote the following:
As its “Rebel Flag” moniker indicated, it universally symbolized, until fairly recently, rebellion, not racism.
The Dukes of Hazzard, starring an automobile called the General Lee sporting the battle flag on its roof, played on CBS as a top-ten rated show in the early 1980s
Well, in the mid-2010’s, the sight of the General Lee is now verboten on TV or at the very least on TV Land. The network which specializes in airing old TV shows has done so in the wake of the backlash against the Confederate flag following last month’s massacre of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC.
The General Lee is no more responsible for the massacre than was the Confederate flag. I’m old enough to remember when The Dukes of Hazzard was the most popular show on TV and I can tell you that the only thing about that aroused incitement was Catherine Bach’s “daisy dukes”.
This is just nuts. People ought to organize public screenings of both the TV series and even the movie in the spirit of freedom of speech, good old fashioned family fun and to also demonstrate that, at least in this context, the benign side of the Confederate flag .