I totally understand the outcry and backlash against the Confederate battle flag in the wake of a recent massacre.

The flag has come to represent hatred, bigotry, bondage … all things of which the nation shouldn’t be proud. It has become the symbol of arguably the nation’s pre-eminent hate group, the Ku Klux Klan.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/motorsports/nascar-fans-defend-display-confederate-flags-at-daytona/ar-AAcARfX

This weekend it became an attraction at a NASCAR race at Daytona Speedway, the Taj Mahal of the sport.

Racing fans flew the flag proudly, proclaiming it represents — to them, at least — Southern “heritage.”

Whatever. To many of us, it represents a lot of other things that have nothing to do with heritage.

But I’m wondering about why a certain television network, TV Land, has decided to discontinue showing “Dukes of Hazzard” reruns on its affiliate stations because it depicts a car driven by two redneck cousins that has a battle flag image painted on its roof.

If ever a show poked good-natured fun at some aspects of Southern culture, that TV show was at the top of the heap. Every one of the characters on that show was a caricature of sorts. The Duke boys, Uncle Jesse, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, all of ’em were intended to make fun.

I never recall anything remotely racist being depicted on that show.

Yes, the flag need not fly on the statehouse grounds in the very state where a racist murderer gunned down nine people with whom he was studying the Bible in Charleston, S.C. It need not be depicted on motor vehicle license plates, or should it fly on public property anywhere in this country.

But to target a light-hearted TV show?

I don’t get that one. Someone will have to explain that to me.