Matt Welch: 'His name was Jefferson Davis Hogg!'

If The Dukes of Hazzard was racist, it sure had a funny way of showing it

Last night on Red Eye w/ Tom Shillue, I defended the honor of The Dukes of Hazzard, a late-'70s, early-'80s television show whose re-runs were incongruously cancelled by TV Land in response to the recent controversies over the confederate battle flag: 

Related: Rep. Ben Jones (D-Ga.), better known as the actor who played the Duke clan's pal "Cooter," said yesterday that "[T]his is like the book burning in Nazi Germany or something…This sweeping cultural cleansing that they're doing. It's got to stop." John "Bo" Schneider responds to kerfuffle here.

You can see more clips from last night's Red Eye at this link.

Comments

[Heroic Mulatto]

OT: If you can't get your way - Pathologize it!

The study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE, found evidence that school shootings and mass killings -- defined as four or more deaths -- spread "contagiously," and 20% to 30% of such killings appear to be the result of "infection." The contagion period lasts about 13 days, researchers found.

Researchers gathered records of school shootings and mass killings from several data sets and fit them into a mathematical "contagion model." he spread they found was not dependent on location, leading researchers to believe that national media coverage of a mass shooting might play a role. On average, mass shootings occur about once every two weeks in the United States and school shootings happen about once a month, the study said.

"What we believe may be happening is national news media attention is like a 'vector' that reaches people who are vulnerable," said Sherry Towers, a research professor at Arizona State University and lead author of the study.

Agency isn't just a river in Egypt.

[Fist of Etiquette]

He wore white after Labor Day.

[Aresen]

How long before Generation Veal decides that the dollar sign is offensive?

[EMD]

FYI - I am working tirelessly to get The Jeffersons re-runs off the air anytime, anywhere they appear.

-- Honkys Unite!

[Heroic Mulatto]

Why bother? They already edited out all the good jokes.

[Mickey Rat]

Does that mean Ben Jones has now realized he is on the villian's side?

[Joec578]

I had to reload this page after I was being raped (that should drive SJWs crazy) by two simultaneous autoplay ads I couldn't turn off. Can something be done about this?

[oldtimer]

I didn't know Boss Hogg was named after a Union General, on Sherman's staff, who would earn notoriety for his role in the betrayal of runaway slaves at Ebenezer Creek.

[In League with the Dark Ones]

Boss Hogg's brother is named Abraham Lincoln Hogg...

[Lanceman]

And let us not forget his nephews Dewey, Louie and Huey, who was ably played by the always funny Jeff Altman.

[James Anderson Merritt]

And now I see that wheels are grinding to take down Confederate memorial statues in Birmingham AL (and probably other places, as well).

Sigh.

After the war, General Lee's battle flag was initially flown, to memorialize the rebel spirit on the one hand, and the bravery and gallantry of Lee and those who fought under his command, on the other. Lee was widely seen as representing the best of the South, at a time when that region and the nation as a whole badly needed to forget and bury the worst. The fact that some people have chosen to appropriate this symbol for hateful purposes is no reason to lose sight of why good people in the South displayed this flag with pride for 150 years.

(concluded in reply comment)

[James Anderson Merritt]

(continued from above)

Memorials to the Confederate troops were not (for the most part, at least) established so that the South could pine away for its past glory and its gentrified, slaveholding way of life. They were not memorials to the Confederacy itself. Instead, they were intended to help heal the war wounds by allowing even the defeated soldiers to be seen as possessing bravery, valor, and dignity in the defense of their homeland. If someone erected a statue to the VietNam War soldier today, would that mean an endorsement of the war and the warmongers behind it? No! It would be a thank you to those who served, risking -- and often enough losing -- life, limb, and sanity. War was no less horrible in the 1860s. In fact, by many accounts, it was much worse. The soldiers on both sides who were honored with memorials deserved them, and I am appalled that Birmingham or any other Southern city would cave in to mob rule and so ignorantly (or disingenuously) mis-represent the purpose of Confederate troop memorials.

[Cyto]

I don't know what folks a hundred years ago felt or thought, but growing up in the south in the 70's the flag was called the "rebel flag", and was generally associated with southern culture, not taking crap from "the man", living life on your own terms, etc. I don't recall anyone ever talking about it in terms of white supremacy (among people I knew - the Klan types certainly liked to pull it out for their ridiculous marches, but then so did Tom Petty, so correlation/causation).

As far as we were concerned it carried the same connotation as the "rebel yell" - not some big statement on race or a desire to bring back slavery or jim crow. But then we were just kids.

I never owned one of those flags. My crew in high school consisted of a nerd, a jew, a Korean weightlifter and a black guy. As far as I recall the only one of us with a rebel flag was the black kid. He had one embroidered on his jean jacket, along with a big skull. He wasn't really tough enough to pull of that look, but he liked the jacket.

[Knarf Yenrab!]

"If someone erected a statue to the VietNam War soldier today, would that mean an endorsement of the war and the warmongers behind it? No!"

One of the problems is that several recent wars, esp Iraq, Vietnam, and WW2, have been dramatized over and over to the point that people can understand the moral ambiguity of war and the myriad reasons why people fought and died (and why we can sympathize with those who lost their lives). It's not a simple matter of good vs. evil, which is the fairy tail that most have been fed re: the Civil War.

The few popular films about it have been Glory or Lincoln-style works that border on anachronism and propaganda, and when you find an amateur with a real interest in delving into the war, you inevitably find someone who understands what people endured. It was a worse spectacle that WW2 or Vietnam, yet it's treated in the press like some dry fact of history that can be ignored by referencing slavery ad nauseum.

The South was invaded by huge armies that burned everything in their path. The Confederates lost their war for independence, a whole generation of fathers was decimated, and Lincoln and co. used total war against people who were once their own countrymen out of their desire to preserve a union that didn't want to be preserved. Respecting their flag and monuments to the war dead, if not their generals, is the least Americans can do if they're not going to try to understand the motivations and suffering of citizens of the CSA.

[LarryA]

All of this keeps reminding me about the college employee who was disciplined for reading an anti-Klan book because it had a picture of the Klan on the cover.

[Stephdumas]

I saw this video on Youtube posted in 2009 who seems to be prophetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHO1PprfmkY