EXTRA: Will ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ become the new ‘Song of the South?’

The ongoing flap over the Confederate battle flag may have taken down a television show from my childhood – the TV Land channel that shows many old sitcoms and dramas has cut out its twice-a-day showings of the “Dukes of Hazzard.”

BACH: Puts Jessica Simpson to shame

You show, the show about a pair of good ol’ boys who run illegal liquor and are constantly being chased about by a batch of bungling boobs of local cops who make Barney Fife look like a dedicated law enforcement official.

OF COURSE, THE car they used in their chases was a bright red Dodge Charger with a battle flag painted on its roof. The merchandising done off the show included toy car replicas of that vehicle.

So with many people amongst official southerndom deciding they now will do what should have been done a half-century ago (do away with the battle flag in any official context), the channel apparently didn’t like that flag appearing repeatedly each and every day.

Personally, I don’t miss the show. I thought it was nit-witish when I was a kid, and other than checking out actress Catherine Bach’s long legs and tight tush I’d have no interest in ever seeing it again.

But I’m wondering if the show is going to wind up becoming glorified in the public eye for something it never was – some symbol of southern culture. If anything, if I were a southerner I’d want to sue someone for portraying the “land of cotton” as being so buffoonish.

WILL PEOPLE START missing the show and attributing to it cultural traits that it doesn’t deserve? Such as what has become of the old Disney film “Song of the South,” which tells the tales of Brer Rabbit and has Uncle Remus singin’ and shufflin’ along like a “good little negro.”

Just try finding it somewhere to watch these days

Sort of how actor Carroll O’Connor’s “Archie Bunker” character would describe all black people, only to be mocked right to his face by his “little goil Gloria” for talking so stupid!

The old racial line of thinking has caused theaters to quit reviving “Song of the South,” and even trying to buy a copy on video isn’t easy. Which causes some people to think the film is more deserving of praise than it actually is.

Bo and Luke and arch-nemesis Boss Hogg probably aren’t even worth the words I’m writing here. I’d hope it doesn’t get elevated to something it’s not worthy of.

Could this place 'Hillbillies' on blacklist?

BESIDES, I WONDER if this means people are going to start reviewing all the programs of the past to see which ones meet a modern sensibility.

Take “The Beverly Hillbillies,” where I specifically remember an episode where Max Baer’s “Jethro” character considers enlisting in the army, only to back away when he learns it’s the “Yankee army” and not the Confederate that he’d be joining.

I also found reference to an episode where Irene Ryan’s “Granny” character (who often touts the political abilities of Jefferson Davis) mistakes a Civil War film scene being shot for actual battle, and totes her shotgun along to get a few Yankees for herself.

Do we wipe out that one-time major hit show? Or maybe the “Andy Griffith Show,” where I recall an episode where someone tries to cash in a war bond that would financially bust Mayberry, only to find out the bond is worthless because it was issued by the Confederate government.

THERE WAS THAT whole 1960s era when CBS’ weekly lineup was filled with southern-themed shows. Do we scour “Green Acres” or “Petticoat Junction” to see which ones are bothersome?

Delightful? Or highly unsanitary?

Although I think the bigger question that rises from the latter show is one that was brought up in an episode some three decades later from “That 70’s Show” – How can they let those women swim naked in the town’s drinking water supply?

Then again, maybe if Bach’s “Daisy Duke” character had done the same in a few scenes, TV Land would be willing to keep that show on the air – regardless of what was painted on that car’s roof?

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Will dumping the Confederate battle flag really change anybody’s attitude?

What should we think of the fact that many people are stepping up the rhetoric these days following the shooting deaths of nine black people at a Charleston, S.C., church to dump the old Confederate battle flag?

For only $59 (plus $6.95 shipping), you can pretend to honor the South

There long have been those who argue the Southern cross flag of the Confederate armies is merely about “heritage,” the notion of a flag that depicts pride amongst those who grew up in that part of the region that once tried to break itself away from the United States.

BUT IT WAS pointed out that when South Carolina state officials last week had the flags at the Statehouse lowered to half-mast out of respect for the dead, the battle flag flying over a nearby Confederate soldier memorial still flew high and proud!

I have heard the official explanation that the flag was incapable of being lowered without someone physically climbing to the top of the flag pole and removing it by hand.

But I really wouldn’t have cared if a battle flag had also been lowered to half-mast. Its very presence some 150 years after the attempt at creating a new nation based on using state’s rights to justify slavery and segregation is what is offensive.

Which is why there are those who are hoping that South Carolina state Rep. Norman “Doug” Brannon, R-Spartanburg, is successful with his rhetoric that he will push for changes in state law to remove the battle flag from having a presence in the state that thinks it’s a point of pride that it provoked the Civil War.

NOT THAT I think it matters much. The kind of people with the racial hang-ups so intense that they’re willing to take up arms are going to keep that symbol no matter what anyone else says.
 

Take Dylann Roof, the barely-a-man who last week went into that black-oriented church and decided to kill a few people – but not all because he wanted witnesses as to his act of what he thinks is manliness (even though I wonder if that girlish haircut of his will make him a prime target in prison).

His Internet-published manifesto that has since been deleted included the photographs of himself waving Confederate battle flags and wearing a jacket depicting emblems of the apartheid-era South Africa and its neighboring nation of Rhodesia  (both of which tried to exist as white-only nations with European roots in portions of the planet where native Africans ought to have been the majority).

Now known as Zimbabwe to those of us who live in the real world.

Do you really want to see someone wear this?

THEN AGAIN, PEOPLE like Roof don’t live in our world. They live in their own world, and think the rest of us ought to have to live there with them. In a legally-mandated subservient position, of course.

So it really doesn’t matter if the symbols get banned. The crackpots amongst us will still feel the same way. Their real punishment is that they’re forced to live in our world – where they amount to a batch of nobodies.

Heck, the swastika of Nazi-era Germany has been an illegal symbol in Deutschland since the end of World War II, yet those Germans who still fantasize about the resurrection of the “Third Reich” are able to get them symbols – usually made right here in the U.S.A.

Insofar as Confederate symbols, we have generations of southerners who were taught a take on the Civil War (the War for Southern Independence, the Second American Revolution, the War Against Northern Aggression, to name a few) that totally justifies the idea that continued use of the battle flag has nothing to do with showing hostility toward the idea of black people being people just like anybody else.

THAT’S NOT GOING to go away any time soon. Knuckleheads will be knuckleheads, no matter what!

If anything, we need a better education process so that people realize what the Southern Cross truly stands for. Because it will only be when people recognize for themselves how tacky a symbol it is that people will relegate it to the dustbin of history.

And how President Barack Obama’s suggestion of retiring the battle flag to a museum (just like the Smithsonian Institute has Ku Klux Klan robes on display as physical evidence of this nation’s racist past) could someday become a reality.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: My own experience with the Confederate battle flag was spending one year attending a high school where the sports teams were “the Rebels” and the flag flew over the school’s football field – along with being painted onto the basketball court. I remember thinking of it as being a silly symbol; one that has since been retired. Of course, I later transferred to a high school where the symbol was a generic Indian chief (think the University of Illinois’ Chief Illiniwek without the pretentious talk of it being an “honored symbol”). I wonder at times which symbol was more ridiculous.

I was once a Rebel, Chicago-style

The Confederate battle flag is shown here in an historically accurate, if somewhat gruesome, setting. Illustration provided by http://www.harpweek.com/.

It was an autumn Friday afternoon in 1979 and several hundred high school students sat in the stands of their school’s football stadium – attending a pep rally that supposedly was getting them all worked up for the Big Game scheduled for that coming Saturday.

Then-Principal Robert Maxeiner provided what was supposed to be the rally’s “dramatic moment” when he walked out on the field to the 50-yard line and opened up his jacket, thereby exposing his special school-spirit vest – one that depicted the Confederate battle flag across his chest.

Off to one end of the stadium, an identical Confederate flag flew – albeit on the same pole underneath a U.S. flag. The school’s athletic teams were known as the Rebels.

Sports teams wore gray uniforms with red trim, as did the short-skirted cheerleaders. Marching band members wore a similar color scheme, although their uniforms were designed to resemble those of Confederate infantry, complete down to gray forage caps with a crossed-sword insignia. The band’s leader dressed in a pompous get-up meant to resemble an officer’s uniform.

The mascot? Ritchie Rebel, a saber-waving Southern soldier, who was prepared to die to keep his homeland free from the Yankee scourge.

Had one gone inside the school building, they would have seen gray and red everywhere, along with Ritchie Rebel logos, lots of rhetoric about the Confederacy and “the South will rise again” and even a Confederate battle flag painted on the floor at the basketball arena’s center court.

I can cite all of this because I was there.

No, I did not do any time in high school in Mississippi, Alabama or any place that was once a part of the failed concept of the Confederate States of America. I wasn’t even in a place like Cairo, Ill., where locals sympathized with the South but never tried secession.

I was right here in Cook County, Ill. The 1979-80 academic year was my first year of high school, and I was a student that year at T.F. South High School in Lansing, Ill.

Yes, I was a Rebel, although I’m sure a real Dixie-style rebel would think I’m nothing more than a damnyankee.

For what it’s worth, T.F. South that year lost the Big Game 13-0 to arch rival T.F. North (the Meteors, not the Yankees). The star for the Rebels that year was Mark Butkus, nephew of football great Dick Butkus. They were overcome by North’s star quarterback – a guy by the name of Mike Tomczak.

All that Confederate imagery overcomes in my mind a high school football game that saw so many of its participants go on to play for the Chicago Bears (Mark Butkus did one year on special teams, while Tomczak was the team’s quarterback at one point). It was ridiculous.

I thought so then, and I think of it every time I hear that people in the South still cling to the old battle flag as a symbol of their heritage – without caring that the same imagery brings to mind the days of segregation and second-class citizenship for African-American people.

With the Democratic presidential primaries now shifting to South Carolina, we’re going to hear lots of debate this week about the Confederate flag and its ideals.

On Monday alone, there were dueling rallies outside the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. One was to honor the memory of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while the other was meant to pay tribute to Southern heritage, which is what the flag’s supporters claim their banner is all about.

In a sense, the “Southern heritage” people won the battle on Monday. The Confederate battle flag could be seen flying from a nearby soldiers’ memorial by those people who were present to honor King. That is just a gross juxtaposition of images.

How seriously is the battle flag taken as a political issue?

Polls taken recently in South Carolina indicate that some of the state’s voters took it personally that both John McCain and Mitt Romney refused to support the concept of the flag, and chose to give their votes to other candidates in the weekend’s Republican primary. Also, GOP candidate Mike Huckabee is getting criticized in some quarters for crudely coming out in support of people who like the flag.

On the other side, many African American voters who make up a significant share of the Democratic Party’s base in South Carolina are looking for their candidates to take a stand against the banner and its ideals for which people like President Abraham Lincoln ultimately died to oppose.

I always thought the flag’s supporters were people from areas that were just too isolated from the rest of the world to understand the negative connotations carried by the Confederacy and its symbols.

For those Southerners who say of the flag, “it’s heritage, not hate,” I’d have to argue that there are aspects of the Confederacy’s heritage that are just downright hateful.

Not that such isolation is limited to the rural South.

The willingness of my high school colleagues to accept the whole Confederate imagery was due to a racial isolation that was in place in those southern suburbs back then.

Many of my classmates had parents who were raised in neighborhoods on the South Side, but then fled when African-American people started moving into nearby neighborhoods in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It was a white ethnic atmosphere (one generation removed) at T.F. South back then. My memory recalls there being six African-American students out of about 1,000 in the school the year I was there, although my search through the school’s yearbook only shows two – and none of them were in the graduating class of 1980.

I don’t think I was surrounded by a batch of segregationist-wannabes. It was just ignorance about history and what the Confederate imagery actually represented that allowed a batch of Yankees from the Land of Lincoln to use a comic-book version of the South.

How ignorant were my fellow students? I remember one who was convinced that the Confederacy must have won the Civil War, because Lansing would not have named a high school for a losing side.

Ignorance sometimes went too far.

I remember one event used by the Student Council to try to raise some money for school activities. Students purchased a series of tickets, then gave them to Student Council members – for which the council members had to perform tasks (such as carrying one’s books to class) for the student.

The event was billed as Slave Day. The very memory makes me cringe now. I can’t remember anyone getting bent out of shape back then.

I haven’t been back to T.F. South since I transferred to another high school district in 1980, although I understand they have toned down the Confederacy imagery considerably, particularly after members of the General Assembly’s black caucus threatened in the early 1990s to start playing politics with the school’s state funding.

Sports teams are still called the Rebels (Lady Rebels for the girls, just like the sports teams at Ole’ Miss) and wear red and gray. But everything else is gone. Underneath the U.S. flag at the football stadium these days is a red banner with the word “Rebels” in gray.

Modern-day students, I am told, look at our old yearbooks, see our pictures and think we were ridiculous – and not just because of the gaudy ‘70s-era clothes we wore to school. For that, I am glad.

Perhaps someday, a similar epiphany will be experienced across the land of Dixie.

My dream is that the day comes when our Southern brethren who also are an important part of the culture of the United States of America will see the nastiness in their continuing use of the Confederate battle flag and countless statues of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee – which only stir up the unpleasant memories of Jim Crow.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: If anyone thinks I am exaggerating about what the school’s atmosphere was like, this website (http://www.tfsouth78.com/index.php) put together by T.F. South alumni from just two years prior to my time as a student there shows some samples of the old imagery.

Here’s a British take (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3359085.ece) on the Confederate flag situation.

Generations of suburban Chicago pseudo-Confederates showed their school spirit by slathering layer upon layer of paint on this 'spirit rock.' Photograph provided by http://www.tfsouth78.com/.