"The Dukes of Hazzard" and its Confederate flag-topped 1969 "General Lee" Dodge Charger won't be roaring around anymore in reruns on TV Land, as the network has pulled the show from its lineup.
The network isn't saying why it made its decision, reports
CNN Money, but the show is off the air a week after Warner Bros., which also distributes the show, said it was going to stop licensing General Lee toys and models that include the flag.
"Dukes" originally aired in the 1980s and has continued to hold a fan base since that time, and one of its stars, Ben Jones, who played "Cooter" on the show, insisted Thursday morning that the show brought millions of people together.
"I think that the train is off the tracks is what I think," Jones told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "Nothing brought people together more than 'Dukes of Hazzard.' Thirty million a week watched this show. Red, black, white, yellow, brown folks — and they loved it. Every section of the country."
The show, he said, is "good, clean" fun a family can watch together, but Viacom, which owns TV Land, has "come under pressure for sanctimonious left-wing interests in New York and elsewhere."
He called the show a piece of "Americana," and pointed out that after DVDs were sent to troops overseas, pictures came back of a Humvee that had been painted with the General Lee's "01" numbers on it and pictures of American and Confederate flags.
"Hey, they said, from 'The Dukes of Fallujah,'" Jones told "Fox & Friends." "This is the most American thing ever. It's the permanent thing. It's been a part of history for 36 years."
Jones compared removing the show and other traces of Confederate history in the wake of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shootings last month to being "like the book burning in Nazi Germany or something."
"This sweeping cultural cleansing they're doing. It's got to stop," Jones, also a former U.S. congressman, said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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