Flag features prominently on General Lee.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A major U.S. cable network has pulled all re-runs of “The Dukes of Hazzard” amidst the controversy that has erupted regarding the Confederate flag after 9 African Americans were murdered by a white supremacist in a historically black Charleston, South Carolina church.
Viacom-owned TV Land confirmed it had taken the series off air but did not say why, according to The Telegraph.
The simultaneously reviled and honored symbol of southern states’ secession from the United States during the nation’s Civil War has come to be equated with an inherent notion of racism and has been appropriated by numerous pro-Aryan hate groups.
The flag features prominently on the roof of the General Lee, the 1969 Dodge Charger driven by Bo and Luke Hazzard in the classic television show, and stands to be the only reason the show could have been yanked off the air.
Last week, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) called for a license plate in his state that has a confederate flag to be redesigned, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Deal’s support for a redesign arrived on the same day that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) called for the removal of the flag from license plates in his state. The governors of Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina — all Republicans — all expressed support for getting rid of the flag on license plates in their states as well.
South Carolina. Gov. Nikki Haley (R) and numerous officials have called for the flag to be removed from the South Carolina capitol, and the fact that it flew at full mast while the true American flag was at half directly following the Charleston massacre angered many Americans across the nation, on a multitude of different levels.
South Carolina lawmakers only recently agreed, during the last week of June, to even debate removing the flag.