It is old news by now that the TV Land channel axed its reruns of The Dukes of Hazard in the wake of the tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina. This act has sparked tremendous controversy. Whether or not you agree with the removal of the Dukes from network television, there is an overarching point here which should not escape this debate. That point is that hate is not conquered by the sacrificial execution of a television show and the flag painted on top of the car at the center of it.
In the South I grew up in, the Dukes of Hazard was the highlight of my Friday nights. I was a devoted fan. On more than one occasion, I sustained injuries and stitches as the result of riding my bicycle off of the precipice of our patio with the unyielding belief that it would fly across the ravine just like the General Lee did on TV. My childhood eyes never saw hate in the General Lee or in Bo or Luke Duke.
I read an article about this debate recently that cited a comment by the Parent’s Television Council on the topic of TV Land’s action which I believe is well worth repeating. They agreed with the removal of the Confederate battle flag from public places but they characterized TV Land’s removal of the Dukes from their lineup as ‘blatant hypocrisy’. I could not agree more. TV Land’s parent company is the media giant, Viacom. As noted by the Parent’s Television Council, Viacom is the purveyor of television content which glamorizes drug use and horrible violence, trivializes pedophilia, rape and the sexual abuse of women and children and when they are called out for so doing, "they are quick to wrap themselves in the banner of Free Speech." That quote deserves front page coverage.
From a very early age, I was taught by my parents and grandparents that a gun was a dangerous and deadly thing. I grew up hunting the whitetail deer and the bobwhite quail and I have never turned down an invitation to a good dove shoot. I have successfully hunted and killed every subspecies of wild turkey in the continental United States excepting only the elusive Osceola turkey of Florida and it is on my radar. Once I tag an Osceola, I will have completed the US Grand Slam of turkey hunting. What I do grasp with absolute certainty is that when the hammer falls, a hand of death is dealt to what is on the other end. Anyone who fails to appreciate this should never wield a firearm.
Video games do not teach this vital principle. These games glorify violence and the killing other virtual people in the air conditioned comfort of your own home. They lend the weak minded or impressionable a belief that death on a TV screen isn’t really permanent. All you have to do is hit the reset button and you can kill the same person again and again and again and it’s not really real... until it is real.
The game manufacturers may say that these episodes are the end result of tragic failures of parenting. In part, they are right. But where it matters, they are tragically and shamelessly wrong. I shudder to think of the abilities, or lack thereof, of the people who raised the boy who walked into a Church in Charleston, South Carolina, listened to their Bible study, conversed with them about scripture and then he stood up, withdrew a gun from his backpack and methodically killed as many of them as he could.
Of course, no one seems to know the detailed circumstances of his childhood but some things can possibly be inferred. The first is that he was indoctrinated and taught to hate people whose skin bore a darker pigmentation than his. Hate must be taught. No one is born with an innate sense of hatred in his or her heart. Second, hatred must be cultivated and reinforced. The mind of a child is inherently malleable but forgiving so you have to really lay it on at some point to get the concept of hatred to stick. Somebody surely did with him. Third, he had a weak and impressionable mind forged in the furnace of a disastrous childhood devoid of love, compassion or guidance.
What this killer did has weighed on my mind considerably so I thought it would help to lay my feelings out by writing about it. My childhood in the small southern town of Wrightsville, Georgia was largely interracial and multi-cultural. Black people spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with us and if they’re not there, we miss them. One of the first and best friends I ever had was Dorsey B. Lewis. He was black and I was white and neither one of us ever noticed the color difference. He died on me before I could tell him goodbye but I miss him daily and especially when I drive past his house.
The mass media desperately coveted the proliferation of racial hostility in the South after this terrible event and that they did not receive because of the integrity and character of those who responded to the calls at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. They wanted riots and strife and calls for blood - just as the killer had wanted. Instead, they received a message of Christian forgiveness. They possessed all of the traits that their killer lacked.
Society should not reduce this to a fight over symbolism. The contest is one of morality, ethics and character. In this debate, the Confederate flag is the equivalent of a bloody piece of meat being thrown between two pit bulldogs. They may fight each other to the death and, in the end, they will fall dead beside the object they were fighting over. But the object will still be there albeit soaked from the blood that they shed as life seeped from their bodies. The better course is to follow the example of the congregants of the Church in Charleston and chart a better path for the future. Introspection should be a key part of this. It is not enough to condemn the act and not the societal ill that creates the actor. This is not the product of a lack of gun control. It is more fundamental than that. This is the collective failure of our society to look in the mirror and address the root cause of very real problems.
