Wouldn't Change If They Could

As Reason's resident devotee of redneck cinema, I'm obliged to pass along this important announcement:

A former star of the "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV
show is urging fans to skip the forthcoming movie version, calling it
"a sleazy insult."

Ben Jones, a former Georgia congressman who played the wisecracking mechanic Cooter on the popular series from 1979 to 1985, said profanity and sexual content in the film make a mockery of the family-friendly show.

"Basically, they trashed our show," said Jones, who read a script of the Warner Brothers movie, which is scheduled to be released next month. "It's one thing to do whatever movie they want to do, but to take a classic family show and do that is like taking 'I Love Lucy' and making her a crackhead or something."

Strong words for a guy called Cooter. Footnote: In the long-lost days of 1980, when "Another Brick in the Wall" emanated from every radio and cassette deck in America, me and my dumbass friends persistently misheard the phrase "dark sarcasm in the classroom" as "Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom." We were nine. It was the south. At the time, it seemed to make sense.