Lowering The Flag In Capital City

The tide has turned in the U.S. against the confederate flag.  Next thing you know, rural Canadians trying way too hard to be country will stop using it. I'm glad to see it, but there's still something to get off my chest.  Commence geography geek-out:

People keep referring to the controversial flag as the "Stars and Bars." However, the Stars and Bars was a different flag.  The flag we've come to know as the confederate flag is nicknamed "The Southern Cross." That misconception actually further incriminates the use of the southern cross.

The southern cross wasn't the national flag of the Confederacy; it was only used in the military.  The national flag was the Stars and Bars. which looked different.  Having said that, the Confederacy later altered the national flag to incorporate the Southern Cross.  But the thing we now know as the confederate flag didn't become a symbol of the south until the twentieth century.  (End geography geek-out.)

Lots of people are discussing the important issues around the flag, so let me take on a less-important issue.  It's time to say goodbye to The Dukes Of Hazzard.  The repeats have been taken out of syndication because of the confederate flag on the roof of the car. Strangely there used to be an urban legend that Bill Cosby owned the rights to the show, and wouldn't let it be shown in reruns be shown because he thought it was racist. 

The roof of the car that is the focus of the series is not something you can just edit out, so the show will probably be sent to the big DVD case in the sky, at least until American society is so equal that civil war symbols are no longer toxic.  Of course, long before that we'll probably have computers that can concoct original episodes of old shows on demand, and they can put together new Dukes episodes without the flag.

Of course, we could just CGI-out the flag right now, but realistically we'd have to wait a few years until such technology is so cheap they can apply it to an old series that's mostly running on nostalgia.  But what would they replace it with?  They could just put an American flag, but it would be nice if they could find something else that would symbolize The South.

So when I was feeling particularly courageous, I did an image search for "symbol of the south."  Disappointingly, there wasn't much other than the confederate flag.  Indeed, the only other symbol was, ironically, the cast of Dukes of Hazzard.  But to be fair, my non-specific search also got lots of symbols for South Korea and South Africa.  Even young South Sudan had a few symbols in the results.  And there was one reference to the old South African flag, but I wasn't about to look up which South that was supposed to be symbolizing.

You could have the flag of Georgia, but it is just a modification on the Stars and Bars (the actual Stars and Bars.)  So that does it: just put a picture of a bowl of grits.

While we're all growing up, let me share a couple of things I realized about the Dukes after the fact:

• They occasionally mentioned that the Duke boys couldn't use firearms under the terms of their parole.  Of course, that was to avoid the gun issue.  In real life, the General Lee would have a gun rack, and suddenly the show isn't as fun any more.
• Similarly, it seemed strange that the Dukes were all just vaguely described as "cousins" was likely a way to refer to, but dance around, the southern stereotype of relationships with close relatives.  Even when they had to create replacement characters during the infamous contract dispute, the writers just concocted even more cousins.