SOCIALLY CORRECTED! (5 July) · 4:59pm Jul 5th, 2015
On Thursday's episode of the Kelly File, Megyn Kelly had on Mark Thiessen. The two had a conversation about the cancellation by TV Land of the early 1980s TV hit The Dukes Of Hazzard, which was also one of the most successful CBS-TV programs of the 1980s. During the exchange, Thiessen blamed what he called "Those Who Hate The South" for the cancellation.
KELLY: TV Land announced it is pulling The Dukes Of Hazzard reruns off the air because the show features a Confederate flag on the car driven by the Duke boys. [...] NASCAR has banned the flag from the stands. The Dukes are off TV and now people are asking exactly how far do we want to go when it comes to scrubbing our history?
THIESSEN: The Dukes Of Hazzard was not about race. This impulse to wash away history is Stalinist. [...] How far does this go?
[few seconds later]
KELLY: So who’s causing this? So if it’s not the actual southerners involved in what happened in Charleston, who is causing this and to what end?
THIESSEN: It’s white liberals from places like New York and Los Angeles who want to feel better about themselves. The fact is we saw in Charleston that the reality of the new south, black and white united together, there was no discord. They came together and it’s these white liberals from the Northeast and California who are trying to do this.
KELLY: Is it about the Confederate flag, which to some is genuinely offensive and disturbing, or is it about a general disdain for, a negative perception of people who live in the south?
THIESSEN: That’s exactly it. It’s not about a flag. It’s about people who live in the south. It’s about a perception among these people in the elites that all southerners are racists and bigots who basically agree with the Charleston shooter and what he did and as we saw in Charleston that is absolutely untrue.
How right is Mr. Thiessen on The Dukes Of Hazzard's cancellation?
Only partially.
He's right that not all southerners are racist and he's right that the cancellation was TV Land's response to the Confederate Flag controversy.
But that is where his accuracy ends.
TV Land certainly does not hate the South; its sister channel CMT continues to air reruns of The Dukes Of Hazzard and is targeted toward Southerners. TV Land wasn't trying to hurt Southerners either; in fact there are quite a few who take offense to the flag. The flag has been used by just about every white supremacist, white nationalist, or neo-Nazi you could think of, and there are as many white people who take offense to the Confederate flag as there are black people.
So, to put bluntly, Mark Thiessen is completely turning a blind eye to confederate fact when it comes to Southerners and The Dukes Of Hazzard official cancellation reasons. So I socially corrected him for it.
Oh, and one last thing: the Consumer Products division of Warner Bros., who produced the show for CBS-TV, announced that they would be simultaneously yanking merchandise related to The Dukes Of Hazzard. As they told NBC News:
Warner Bros. Consumer Products has one licensee producing die-cast replicas and vehicle model kits featuring the General Lee with the confederate flag on its roof — as it was seen in the TV series. We have elected to cease the licensing of these product categories
I wasn't aware that the Dukes were actually trying to foment a rebellion against the United States of America for the purpose of re-imposing black slavery.
"Now, the Duke Boys were in a mite of trouble for building that ironclad and attacking coastal shipping, and Boss Hogg was ridin' em pretty hard for forming a unit of irregular cavalry and robbing trains, but Ah'm sure they'll get outta this okay ..."