MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently shared that he was “strictly forbidden” from watching TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. The reason why? The long-debated Confederate flag boasted on the top of the recognizable vehicle.
“Just remembered when I was little kid I was strictly forbidden from watching the Dukes of Hazzard by my mom because of the flag on the car. Good work, mom!” Hayes writes on Twitter. The Confederate flag is a symbol that is undergoing removal across the country from the Mississippi state flag to NASCAR.
Chris Hayes thinks it was a good thing that he was not allowed to watch ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ as a kid
Just remembered when I was little kid I was strictly forbidden from watching the Dukes of Hazzard by my mom because of the flag on the car. Good work, mom!
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 1, 2020
The Dukes of Hazzard was one of the most-watched, popular television programs that run from 1979 to 1985 on CBS. It was the lead-in for the most-watched program next to Dallas. The show officially went off the air in 1985 and would continue with reruns until 2015 when TV Land announced they would be removing the show from its network. This was due to complaints pouring in about the General Robert E. Lee Confederate flag.
RELATED: Streaming Feature For ‘Dukes Of Hazzard’ Uncertain Following Confederate Symbol Controversy
A museum in Illinois has also spoken out saying they will not stop displaying their Dukes of Hazzard car with the Confederate flag atop the vehicle. The museum director says it’s “a part of history” and that they’ve had a lot of people speaking out in favor of keeping it.
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Of course, given the controversial nature of his tweet, it was met with mixed reactions. “I’m black and I loved watching The Dukes of Hazzard and still stop to watch it if I catch it on somewhere. I had the toys and my mother’s husband had an orange Charger just like the General Lee but no Confederate flag,” one Twitter user writes.
Another says, “You missed out, then. The iconography is incidental to the show; it was really just a light comedy with strong family themes, a sense of good and evil where evil never looks cool and never wins, and great comedic turns by Sorrell Booke and James Best.” However, one commenter agrees with Hayes, saying, “Great example of good parenting!”