I’m from the American Southeast. I’m American by birth, Southern by grace of hashem. Sure, I was born around New York to Jewish parents from the Bronx (and for one of them, Havana before the Bronx), but I moved to North Carolina when I was two, and, aside from a nearly 20-year stint in Los Angeles that I very much enjoyed, I’ve lived my life in the South. That’s why I feel like I’m qualified to make judgments about pop culture and media that are set in the South, like the infamous Dukes of Hazzard.
There was a certain kind of cartoonified idea of the South that became especially popular in American culture in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and The Dukes of Hazzard is probably the best-known example of this. It’s a ridiculous show about the Duke Boys getting into jams and scrapes and hijinx that ends up with them having to jump their Confederate Battle flag-emblazoned ’69 Charger over mud pits and ravines as Daisy Duke wears Daisy Dukes and corrupt local police chew the scenery.
The cars, of course, are the grits that hold the whole show together, and, as you may expect, they’re almost all American Iron, with a smattering of the expected Volkswagens and an occasional Honda. You can look at the IMCDB page for the show and see what I mean.
But there’s one weird outlier, and it shows up in the opening credits of every episode. Look:
See the car that gets its tires shot with arrows loosed by Bo and Luke? It’s a pretty tight close-up, so it’s hard to see exactly what that car is, I know. I mean, it’s just a wheel. But it is a distinctive wheel.
Luckily, what seems to be the same car shows up in at least one other episode:
It’s a Peugeot 504! A 1972 one, it seems. An icon of French motoring, and while these were imported to the United States from 1968 to 1991, they were never really all that popular, despite being excellent, rugged cars. When they did sell, they tended to sell in the more urban areas, where people were a little more open to driving something weird and so unashamedly foreign.
The Dukes of Hazzard takes place in the fictional Hazzard County, Georgia, home to the equally-fictional Civil War Battle of Hazzard County. I went to college in Atlanta for a couple years, and spent a lot of time driving around rural Georgia, along with many years of traveling around all sorts of North Carolina counties and other lovely, humid Southern backwaters. I can tell you for a fact that there were not many Peugeots around.
Sure, where I grew up in Greensboro, we had a handful of Peugeots buzzing Gallically around, but as you got further and further from the city, you were a hell of a lot less likely to see anything like this. Which brings me to my question: who the hell had the Peugeot in Hazzard County?
Now, I have a sort of theory: in many hick counties I’ve driven through, I’ve found plenty of junkyards. And those junkyards almost always have one solitary weird car. I just drove out to Kinston, NC, for example, and on the way saw an Autobianchi at a scrapyard, propped up high on a sign. I’ve found a lone Renault Dauphine in a field behind a barn, too. There are some weirdos out there.
So, maybe this 504 is Hazzard County’s lone weirdo? I’d like to think it’s driven by a French-Canadian academe who is undertaking a large-scale cultural anthropology project about the American South, and they’ve embedded themselves in Hazzard County, driving around in their Peugeot, taking notes, watching, scrutinizing.
Is that why the Duke Boys are shooting arrows into its tires? They don’t appreciate being subjects of a study? Did they read an early draft and feel they were being condescended to? Or did they feel the work wasn’t properly footnoted, and they’re shooting an arrow for every missed citation?
I wish I knew. This Peugeot makes as much sense in Hazzard County as a rabbi at a pig pickin’. If I were this hypothetical Hazzard County Peugeot owner, I’d at least consider painting a cocarde tricolore on the roof and naming the car the Général du Gaulle.
Then I’d jump over a huge ravine to elude Gendarme Coltrane and Chef Porc.
Rural New England (as well as suburban) had lots of weirdos sitting in driveways and yards back then and later, often looking like they hadn’t run in a while, but present just the same. Nowadays, I sadly see more VW-Lamborghinis than TR6s, which used to be everywhere on nice days. Almost nobody seems to have anything mildly interesting even when they can well afford a toy car.
Lack of fun or at least interesting or weird cars in the US seem to correspond to the ‘enshitification’ of the economy in the US with no real rise in household income in the past 45 years.
As such people buying new cars have trended ever more to 1 car that can serve all their needs or more often this 1 truck to fit their needs.
I felt very fortunate to see a Lotus Elise (late 1990s version) on the road last week. That was an exceptionally rare special exception.
We’re also in a weird period with legacy auto companies put at risk from the literal hundreds of Chinese primarily ev auto manufacturers putting enormous pressure on what little sales Ford and GM attempt to make outside our stars & stripes shores.
Hell Ford and GM barely make cars any more at least for the US market w/Ford down to 1 model (ice Mustang) and GM down to what last year of the Malibu, Corvette and 3 Cadillacs (CT4, CT6, starting in 26 Celestiq)
The US auto startups (Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, Aptera*, Slate, Telo*), DO give me hope of improved diversity in interesting / fun / weird vehicles again becoming available new for sale in the USD!
*while I think Slate will make it to production, both Aptera and Telo are questionable, even though I very much am cheering for them both
I understand why they don’t sell in the numbers they did and why people buy more versatile bring stuff, but where I am is very affluent and people will have multiple Jeep GCs or some other boring SUV (even in the same non-color or one black and one white) rather than anything even mildly interesting. I think one guy has a 911 SC, though I’ve only seen it a couple times, which I guess qualifies as mildly interesting and someone who visits one of the neighbors has one of the fat-ass California Spiders, but the days of riding my bike around finding random Opel Mantas, Lancia Scorpions, Daimler SP250s, and so on in apartment building parking lots are long gone.
Yeah the point I was trying to make is a number of important factors have shapped the avg. vehicle offerings in the USD into 4(ish) categories
1. Big ass pickups
2. SUV/Crossover
3. Cute cute
4. An alarmingly small number of actual cars (sedans mostly, a few coupes and an exceedingly rare actual sports.cars or sporting intent cars).
Multiply this across multiple decades… and it makes trying to.find different / unique / fun cars more difficult per year as those cars numbers continue to dwindle…
Think of the affordable convertible Sportscar. New what’s left the Miata. Used? Mostly Miatas (+ Fiatas) and Porsche Boxters (mostly), MR2 Spyder, Corvette
In 1990s There were a Lot more choices. Alfa Spiders, MR2, MGB, Triumphs, Mustang, Camero, Corvette, 914, Fiat Spyder, Eagle Talon, BMW 3, Mitsubishi 3000 GT, RX7, Toyota Celecia series and several others I’m sure I’m leaving out
When I was finding those cars as a kid, these were lower middle class people and the cars were largely over a decade old. they’d have the one weirdo, whereas, people today seem to either have none or a collection they never drive. I don’t think it’s just a lack of availability in new, it’s a seeming reluctance to have something old or for the people to own them to actually drive them. (Part of that problem is everything has been turned primarily into an investment, from the house one lives in to old cars to f’n toy train sets due to a lack of economic security and 1% manipulations, but I’m getting carried away yet again.) From there, exposure to anything interesting or decent to drive is greatly reduced, so there is little understanding of what would draw someone to a fun car. Couple that with becoming a culture of utter pansies who peacock insincere and false images of superficial toughness instead of practicing it and there’s even less interest in “little death traps” that don’t project a grr, I’m scary image. It’s like the impending death of the manual (minor increase in sales with the few of us weirdos still buying specialty cars aside), why would someone younger have any interest in learning? They likely don’t know anyone with one for exposure or to learn from, would have to buy something that isn’t all that practical to have one, likely nobody else could borrow it (a plus in my book, but not most peoples’), don’t appreciate what makes them better to drive because they’ve only been exposed to boring shit and they hear Fleshlight-fetishists parroting that automatics are faster and get better mileage (at least on paper), and we have dumbass gatekeepers out here who can’t heel-toe making the skill required to drive one out to be like summiting Mt Rainier in the winter when it’s pretty basic at the daily level.
All good points. I had manual transmission cars as my daily driver for 22 years. That ended 8 years ago now.
Only manual trans. I have left is a 74 MG B GT that has been in my family literally for 40 years. I’ve gotten enough through my home ‘to do’list that I can finally get started working on it right after Thanksgiving and it will be what I use to teach my children how to drive stick.
At times I envy farm kids that were able to learn how to drive manual on non-syncro transmissions, though I would expect even on a farm you’d have to find a field truck (or large military truck) that is +50 years old to find one with a non-syncro transmission.
My ‘why’ for wanting to learn on non-syncro is simple… if you can drive one of those you can drive anything.
Yeah, it’s cool to know, but I wouldn’t want to drive one in modern traffic. I try to drive as if I don’t have synchros, but I’m glad they’re there. I’d really like to try a sliding gear setup, but that’s getting really old.
Interesting article…
It would be so great is all authors provided a hyperlink in the text that introduces a YouTube video.
It would be even greater if that were an option in the formatting on the phone browser version, which is the version I post from.
There are still people in France who are convinced that Peugeots are driven by right-wing bourgeois types while Renaults are driven by the lower classes. Mitterand using Renaults as state cars when he was President confirmed this.
Citroëns are mainly bourgeois but because they are so comfortable, let you escape complete classification,
So the Duke car should have been a Renault.
And bow and arrow hunting is now legal in France but for years was only used, illegally by poachers, who we all know are masters of camouflage….
Well technically there’s some truth in it…
Just after the WWII Renault was nationalized (because helping the Nazi) and was ordered to build small, cheap, cars for the lower classes, while Peugeot and Citroën (despite the 2CV) was nicely asked to cater for the middle and upper classes
It quickly went south and all the companies catered for all the range.
As for the bow and arrow hunting… It has been legal for decades now (since 1991).
Poachers perfer the gun, it’s quicker, easier more efficient (as some would say)
Didn’t Citroën get pressed into service by the Germans and make vehicles that would blow up over time?
Citroen were so clever, what they did was intentionally mis-mark the oil dipsticks, so that they’d read full when they were dangerously low, ensuring engine destruction for the nazi war machine. Kudos to Citroen.
Very clever indeed.
My grandfather was working class (general contractor, bar owner) and a devoted Citroën man, with a GS, a BX, and a Fourgonnette. I am not aware of a Citroën = bourgeois association there.
The driver of that Peugeot was probably some sort of ecology researcher from the University of Georgia, who had driven over from Athens to do soil studies, and trespassed on Uncle Jesse’s farm. When confronted, he started lecturing Uncle Jesse about all the environmentally unsound farming practices he was engaged in, and then Bo and Luke used his Peugeot for target practice. Then Cooter towed the car back to his shop, overcharged him for new tires, and sent him packing.
That was my grandmother’s Peugeot. She drove it until the strut towers rusted through in the mid-eighties. Icebox white, 4-speed column shift, sunroof, great seats.
Of course, as a truly unpleasant member of New Jersey’s gentry, grandma (1909 – 1992) would have been both too racist for Hazzard’s fictional hillbillies and unwilling to piss on them if they’d caught fire. She was probably there looking to purchase valuable antiques for pennies on the dollar from a yokel or to castigate a domestic’s mother for raising an uppity daughter.
Confirmed: your great-great-grandmother was Hetty from “Ghosts.”
Holy crap that comment took a turn
If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were my sibling.
I mean I was 8 when I watched this but I always thought they were shooting out the tire of a cop car.
Circa 1986 I was part of a state honors band that did a month tour of Europe. We landed in Paris. When I turned on the TV in my hotel room, the two shows playing were Star Trek (original series) and Dukes of Hazzard. It was all dubbed in French, but that was okay. I knew all the Trek episodes by heart, and it turns out that “yeeeeeeeeee-ha!” needs no translation.
Even at my tender young age, it did bother me that this was probably where French people got their impressions of Americans.
My family took a vacation to Acapulco when I was 13, summer of 1985, and one of the funniest things I saw on our entire trip was in the hotel room: “The Dukes Of Hazzard” en Español. “Yeeeeeee-HAH!” also translates directly into Spanish as well.
TBF we got our impressions of the French from the Pink Panther movie with Inspector Clouseau
Does your dog bite?
No.
Goes to pet the dog and gets bit.
I thought you said your dog won’t bite?
That is not my dog.
I got my impressions of the French from Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail. They weren’t too far off.
Don’t forget Columbo and Starsky & Hutch.
It’s ok, my generation based our views on the US on Friends and MTV.
It’ belongs to Frank Columbo’s older brother Forest Columbo.
Jason you disappointed me. You are quite judgemental on the mountain people of Hazard County. If you had watched the show you would know Boss Hogg was the evil head of Hazard County and as such screwed over traveler’s and citizens alike. Attack of the Duke Boys who every episode were on the side of right as ignorant rednecks is quite racist. But knowing you as I do I doubt there is a racist bone in your body. You seem like a straight up guy. I can only assume you knowledge of the Dukes of Hazzard is due to never seeing it. Quite like mine about Yentl. In fact you come off as educated as David on pop culture. Watch a few episodes.
Back in the 90s my mom lived in a fairly rural part of Virginia, about 45 minutes northwest of Roanoke, and the town had a small town local mechanic that everybody used to work on their cars, and his wife drove…a Saab convertible. Was the neatest thing, think someone else in town also had a Karmann Ghia, and the local accountant in town drove an early 60s Thunderbird convertible, giant boat could barely make it through the small town streets.
So you do get some variety in the sticks, in the isolated parts of the country people get to be themselves more so it’s not entirely unplausible.
“Once upon a time, there was this very smart Greek fella that said that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Well, I can tell ya right now that that fella had never been to Hazzard County.”
Waylon Jennings Voiceover from 10 Million Dollar Sheriff
Clearly you and I are the only people on here who watched Dukes of Hazzard regularly
Welp, that’s fittin’, since ol’ Waylon’s “balladeer” served as the show’s Greek chorus. He orta know.
Back in ’74, Dad got orders to NAS Pensacola (aka “Lower Alabama”) from AFSOUTH Naples Italy. While in Italy, he had ordered a US-spec ’71 504 sedan (gas) and we spent the next 3 years touring europe in it. (It did not have amber rear turn signals.) When we got back to Pensacola with the 504, I believe that it was the only one within a 80 mile radius. It was a damn good car that served our family well. Rugged & sturdy. But man I really disliked that wonky rear trunk.
“Lower Alabama” my foot. I’m a native of the real Lower Alabama – Dothan, the peanut capital of the world! Dothan expats have fun telling people they grew up in “East LA.”
I’m coming up on a decade as a Pensacola resident, and my parents have lived down the road in Fort Walton Beach for over 30 years. It does not surprise me at all that your dad had the only Peugeot within a hundred miles. I would have said I was surprised that there was even one, but I don’t have to tell you how many oddball items from other countries randomly show up here on the Gulf Coast, what with Pensacola NAS and Eglin Air Force Base in the area. A couple of decades ago, I bought an amazing suit at a thrift store, and as near as I could tell from the label sewn inside, it had been custom tailored for someone in Turkey. I’ll bet no one else within a hundred miles had a custom tailored Turkish suit that day, either.
In rural 1980’s southern Michigan “The Dukes of Hazzard” episodes were known as “drivers education films”.
Studio owned cars were really something back then.
There’s an episode of the original (the real) Hawaii 5-0 that features a Toyota 2000gt. In an episode of the Rockford Files the bad guy drives an Iso Grifo….
I would do…. things… for some seat time in an Iso Grifo.
Daisy Duke and others like her during the ‘jiggle TV’ era… ahh simpler times. Seeing DOH and all others of that era via re-runs in the 80s and early 90s was awesome as an adolescent and teen.
The cars were cool too.
I’ve been rewatching The Rockford Files lately. Those were late 70s and 80s, but they’re really good. (Last watched as a kid in the 80s)
It’s also fun to watch giant 70s land barges wallow around the road in an “exciting” car chase. Tire squeal was so endemic that they dub it in excessively, even when the chase is on dirt. But there is a car chase every episode.
Guess I’ll be rewatching Dukes of Hazard next, maybe Magnum PI?
Side note, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t do a Rockford Turn (J-turn) until mid season 2, then it happens a lot. I thought that was interesting.
I’m a big fan of all the free channels that come with TVs these days, because of all the classic reruns they show. I have watched several episodes of “The Rockford Files” this way in recent years, and the show really holds up well as a classic PI show. And I’m also convinced that James Garner is a big reason why – he’s one of the best everyman “guys being dudes,” both on screen and off, that ever came out of Hollywood. And that’s without even mentioning a gold Firebird Esprit (actually an incognito Formula) pulling j-turns.
“The Dukes Of Hazzard,” on the other hand… yikes. I remember being pleased that reruns started showing up on TNN back in the 00s. I turned it on one day, and I only lasted about 10 minutes before I grimaced and changed the channel. No matter how Southern and Autopian I am, no matter how many consecutive years of my childhood Friday night at 8:00 p.m. CST on CBS was unmissable appointment television, regardless of the fact that The Bandit is both my profile picture and my spirit animal, it was terrible. Resolved: “The Dukes Of Hazzard” is best enjoyed by being eight years old.
Good to know.
Some things have aged well. Some, not so much.
Been watching Simon & Simon episodes myself.
Simon and Simon were pretty good too. I watched those a lot as a kid, and rewatched most of them about 3-4 years ago.
I’ve currently got Rockford, Hawaii 5-0, and Peter Gunn in my queue on Roku Channel.
Yeah, loved it as a kid. Unwatchable as an adult. Same goes for A-Team. I really pushed myself to make it 20 minutes. I suspected that would be the case, but I watched Miami Vice earlier and was pretty impressed overall, so I thought I’d give some other shows a shot. I gave up after that.
I have said it for years: if the Calderon story arc from season 1 of “Miami Vice” were released as a movie instead, it would have been one of the biggest action movies of the 1980s.
And of course, the “In The Air Tonight” scene from the pilot established a still-running TV trope: the “impactful penultimate scene with pop hit of the day playing behind it.” No, that wasn’t “House M.D.” or “ER,” that was “Miami Vice.”
That scene, that sound, still can give goosebumps when you drive now in your convertible through the night while playing “In the air tonight” when trying to distract yourself from some real life issues…
Every shot in it the “In the Air Tonight” scene is so well done and hit me even at around 7 years old. I put a tribute to it in every book series partly tongue-in-cheek, but also because it happens to work, if not in quite the same context. I even worked it into a series with animal protagonists on their way to try to rescue their human from criminal treasure hunters (the German Shepherd attack dog with PTSD looking for redemption, the goat who lost his herd in a flash flood and was nearly eaten being the ride-or-die, and the rescued sloth who grew up with the dog who has taken to heart all the pitying comments about helplessness from other animals helping the only way she can).
It’s almost too bad MV was made at a time when long term story arcs were secondary to episodic arcs due to the nature of broadcast TV. They did do more with long arcs than most at the time, but it could have gone further and been more effective. There was also the limitations of what they could show, but I think that helped in some cases because there are a number of times where they seem to skip particularly up-close violence (I assume for broadcast standards, though maybe intentional) to cut to an observer reaction shot, like Crockett screaming, “no!” as someone offs themself, then they freeze frame and it ends. I think that makes it more emotionally impactful for the viewer and more obviously adds to the toll the job takes on the main characters and, if they tried to do it today, they’d very likely screw that up. Like, the ’00s movie could have had any title and character names. In the show, the ’80s and the city were so integral, not merely as setting, but essentially envelopment and driver to some extent, that removing it from that decade alone was dooming it to an “in name only” status. Shit, the real ’80s had off shore racing teams funded by drugs and they even ran drugs with their racing boats, it was crazy. Eh, whatever, the original holds up well on its own and a modern version wouldn’t have the goofy only-in-the-’80s shit, like the doll-killer episode.
Probably had to wait until they made a Firebird powerful enough to do a J turn
Magnum PI is still pretty good. Simple, but it has some decent humor, sarcasm ( Higgins ), lush landscapes and pretty decent action (who doesn’t like helicopters). I also always thought Magnum’s voice overs were soothing for the soul.
Peugeots were imported until 1992, not 1991. Just not very many ’92s made it, something like 1500 total. I owned the last 1992 505 SW8 imported into the country with the very last shipment of 505s and 405s to be brought in, July 1992 build date. Also the ONLY SW8 (8-passenger wagon) ever imported with a stick, which was not offered in the US on the SW8. Original owner had friends in high places, and had bought a new Peugeot every other year or so for 25 years… Then kept that one until ’99 because he couldn’t buy another one.
But Peugeots are VERY popular in third-world places, which about sums up Hazzard County, no? So why not? On all those dirt roads and jumps you won’t find a more comfortable ride. I have owned three 504s, one sedan, two wagons.
The Peugeot 504 was Africa’s unofficial taxi, together with diesel Mercedes W123.
In Morocco, the in-town taxis (petite taxi) were all Peugeot 205’s, and all of the between-town taxis were beige or brown W123’s.
All of them.
(This was twenty years ago, so it’s probably changed a bit)
Yeah, I was thinking of 40 years ago :p
Did you ever wonder why every alien planet on TNG, DS9, and VOY looks like SoCal?
Then notice how much Hazzard County looks like SoCal. Brown grass, bare rocks, ugly sand… not exactly Georgia.
It looks just like Walnut Grove, Minnesota and Uijeongbu, Korea.
Or at least most people’s image of them from Little House and M*A*S*H.
My wife was watching Little House recently, and yeah, that ain’t Minnesota. Now there are parts of the Central Valley that could pass, so long as you keep the mountains out of camerashot.
Well what do you expect? Starfleet Academy was actually a wastewater trreatment plant and it’s adjacent Japanese garden. Boothby knows what plants crave and it’s not Brawndo.
Yeah, Vasquez Rocks (of Gorn infamy) and other such locales are all within the so-called ‘thirty mile zone’ for many studios in Hollywood.
Per Wikipedia:
“[E]ntertainment works produced within the area are considered “local” and workers are responsible for paying for their own meals and transportation to work sites; those outside the zone are considered “on location” and the studios are generally expected to pay for these expenses.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_zone
Hence so many alien planets looking like they’re just a short commute away for typical Los Angelenos.
I know the old quarry at Soledad Canyon was used a lot.
Hence the news site and show TMZ.
Too bad they aren’t doing it now. From the news clips I’m seeing they wouldn’t even need to hire aliens as most of the citizens in cities of California would pass for aliens far easier than the fake aliens in earlier Star Trek episodes. To my biggest regret I was hoping the future was more like Buck Rogers in the 20th century with Wilma Dearing in a satin skin tight flight suit of multiple colors
Wilma Dearing was the best space babe. Better than 6, better than Seven.
As a recent transplant to Delaware, I’m surprised nobody has discovered Cape Henlopen to stand in for an alien planet. The Point is the sandy northern tip of the cape, and in the winter it looks barren and otherworldly, and to boot there’s some kind of telecoms tower that could pass for a spaceport with a little digital trickery.
In the first 5 episodes, Hazzard looks exactly like Covington, Georgia.
Oh that’s right, they did start in Georgia.
Kinda like the pilot for Gilmore Girls, which looks completely different from Star’s Hallow.
I have said it here before: the first time I ever went out west and drove through southern California, I chuckled to myself at how much the terrain looked like “North Carolina” in “The Andy Griffith Show” or “Georgia” in “The Dukes Of Hazzard,” while also bearing a suspicious resemblance to “Korea” in “M*A*S*H.” Nodding to that last one, I felt like I should keep an eye out for Five O’clock Charlie trying to throw a bomb out his plane window at me.
It sure didn’t look like Hazzard, Kentucky. I spent a few years there one week about 20 years ago. If you have the opportunity to go there – pass on it.
And every alien planet in Dr Who, Red Dwarf, Hitch-hikers Guide, etc all look remarkably like a Welsh quarry?
” If I were this hypothetical Hazzard County Peugeot owner, I’d at least consider painting a cocarde tricolore on the roof and naming the car the Général du Gaulle.”
Methinks the Cross of Lorraine would be more fitting. That said, the Cross belongs to patriots and victors, whereas the Confederate flags are for traitors and losers.
“Traitors and losers.” Technically, you’re not wrong, but as a proud native southerner myself, you are missing the extremely crucial context that makes most other Americans get this wrong, which also explains why so many Southerners get the same thing wrong in the other direction. Please pardon an extremely long piece of copypasta from a comment in another forum, but here’s the part you’re leaving out:
The Lost Cause.
https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/lost-cause-ideology/
In short, an influential cadre of rich white southerners too embarrassed to admit that the Confederacy took a well-deserved ass-whipping in the Civil War made it their business to craft a noble, mythological narrative around what they had tried and failed to do, and to have it taught as the real history of the Civil War in southern public schools. The former states of the Confederacy are those rare places on earth where history was successfully written by the losers, and taught as fact in schools for an unbelievably long time. It is only lately that the narrative is being unraveled in the south.
So when you see a southerner proudly waving a rebel flag, especially one of a certain age, give him enough benefit of the doubt to remember that he belongs to a subculture which has been more successfully bullshitted about its own history, and from official sources, than perhaps any other in United States history. In my experience, most of my fellow southerners who have displayed the Confederate flag in my lifetime were really expressing regional pride more than anything else – “heritage not hate,” as the familiar excuse goes – in a way not really functionally different from having a New York Yankees cap or an LA Lakers bumper sticker. A simple cultural statement of, “We’re awesome. Go us.” The problem is, everyone from every other part of the country knows the real story of what that flag actually represents, because they were not told the same lies he was in fourth grade state history class. If we were not taught to revere that flag, both culturally and educationally, why do I know black people with it tattooed on their skin, by choice?
Of course, when you see someone displaying that flag and spouting racist shit, there’s only one conclusion to draw. But here’s an ironic protip, as a southerner: The further from the former states of the Confederacy you see a rebel flag, the more likely it is being waved in the name of pure bigotry. A good ol’ boy in Georgia with a rebel flag plate on the front bumper of his truck? There’s at least a 50/50 chance that he’s a nice man who loves his mama and takes care of his kids and goes to church and works hard, and is expressing pride in his homeland, where he was proud to play high school football with black teammates, and probably even underneath some black coaches. The same guy in Idaho? Racist. Period. No question. Get the FBI on the phone right now before he shoots up a black church.
You see, the guy in Georgia has at least half of an excuse as to why he would innocuously display that flag. The guy in Idaho has certainly been taught better, by his peers and family if not in school. The Georgia guy’s flag should spur you to at least take a moment to examine your context clues. The Idaho guy’s flag means that whatever popped into your mind when you saw it is precisely true.
But in the actual south? Maybe he’s a bigot and maybe he’s not, but I can tell you from experience what he is for sure: the product of the most successful ongoing propaganda campaign in American history, one which would have made Joseph Goebbels stand and applaud. I am embarrassed to say myself how old I was before I realized the depth of the bullshit around Confederate history, and I am a former honor student with a bachelor’s degree. It’s a real thing.
And continues to this day under the DOE.
As a yankee who went to college in northwest GA and taught Social Studies in southeast GA, I can show some definite appreciation of this explanation/observation.
What you may have left out is that (at least as of mid-90s) as part of that propaganda, some history teachers referred to the Civil War as ‘The War of Northern Aggresion’.
Of course this was also around the time that Ken Burns’ Civil War came out. I’d like to think it helped to open people’s mind somewhat.
I’ve heard “The War Of Northern Aggression” all my life, but I’ve only ever heard it used in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, with a wink.
With regard to the two hypothetical flag wavers I mentioned, here’s a bit of irony for you: If the Idaho guy is waving that flag while saying, “Yeah! The Confederacy had the right idea!”, even the Georgia good ol’ boy would most likely hear such a thing and say, “Hey, whoa, that’s not what I meant at all.”
Maybe it was there for the planned-but-never-filmed cross over episode with Columbo?
Columbo was on NBC, and they only did crossovers in-network.
Barnaby Jones or Magnum. Or Simon & Simon.
Some used car dealer got it as part of a bulk buy and sold it steeply discounted to someone who just needed a cheap ride to work and couldn’t afford to be picky
A lot of the oddball cars I would encounter in the midwest were owned by former soldiers, who would bring a favorite car back with them from overseas.
Given the recent Vietnam war and France’s long standing ties to Vietnam, it seems very possible that the owner is a Vietnam veteran from Hazzard County.
Even a 504 looks a little better next to a leggy brunette. But I’m easy to please. 😉
Yeah like you even noticed a car within Catherine Bach in Daisy Duke shorts. How many other shows introduced a fashion trend? Sure Miami Vice but not many
Those shorts are darn right conservative now-a-days on the street.