‘CULTURAL CLEANSING’ OF SOUTHERN HERITAGE: It Began Decades Ago
by Kenn Daily
Clash Daily Contributor
The Dukes of Hazzard television show was yanked from the lineup at TV Land this week. The show is just another casualty of the media’s blitzkrieg cultural war against Southern heritage.
The cultural cleansing of everything Southern and wholesome began long before the tragic murder of nine black churchgoers by a white loon in Charleston, South Carolina last month.
Most Americans are unaware of the “rural purge”, for example.
The purge was a concerted effort by network television companies to cleanse their lineups of anything that provided white Americans with a guilt-free sense of identity.
The series of show cancellations began in 1969, just four years after Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Most of the feel-good, fun programs were axed during the 1970-71 television season.
Neither popularity nor profitability spared programs from being cancelled.
Wielding the ax was television executive and producer Fred Silverman. Among his casualties was the beloved Petticoat Junction. The popular, fun, and feel-good show was displaced by the social sensitive and white-guilt laden sitcom, All in the Family.
The change made no waves as Americans settled in to their sofas and Lazy Boys to laugh at themselves vicariously through the Archie and Edith Bunker characters. Silverman was, apparently, emboldened.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Mayberry R.F.D. followed the fate of Petticoat Junction.
Veteran actor Pat Buttram quipped, “It was the year CBS canceled everything with a tree.”
Buttram played the country-bumpkin conman, Mr. Haney, on Green Acres.
The cuts were ostensibly made to attract younger viewers. There is no data of which I am aware that the stated objective was achieved. With few exceptions the nation’s television airwaves were purged of rural-set shows with all-white casts and replaced with gut-gouging programs that jabbed our social consciences and prodded us to align our thoughts with cultural Marxism.
There were, of course, exceptions.
The Waltons debuted in 1972. It’s nine-season tenure proved Silverman wrong: Americans, including young adults, still had an appetite for wholesome programs that were entertaining sans the systematic but subtle lessons on social justice.
Little House on the Prairie brightened the lives of TV viewers from its home on NBC beginning in the 1980s. Unlike The Waltons, however, the Charles Ingalls’ family found themselves in a frontier setting sparsely populated with occasional, though out-of-place, black characters.
Once again, Silverman was proved wrong.
It was 1979 that the now-despised Dukes of Hazzard roared through our living rooms, thanks to Bo Duke and cousin Luke driving their orange-red 1969 Dodge Charger stock car. It was the benign Confederate flag painted on the car’s roof that offends the easily offendable.
Dukes of Hazzard attracted young adults in droves, but may have been the last show to fall victim to the unseen hand of social-engineering censors.
Today’s television offerings provide no fictional programs that make white people feel good about themselves and their heritage. That’s not to suggest that non-white characters should be purged from our television screens. Rather, it is to demonstrate that the hatemongers who demonize the once-benign Confederate flag as a symbol of hate have been at work for decades, slowly and methodically cleansing our sensitives of Make Room for Daddy to make space for cultural Marxism.
Then, off course, there was the well-publicized demonization of popular television restaurateur, Paula Deen. Deen’s crime was never anti-black racism. Even Oprah embraced her before the courts confirmed that conclusion. Deen was guilty of country cooking with Southern charm, violating the nefarious code of the predatory left and running divergent to the objectives of cultural Marxism: Everything Southern must be tainted as hateful white racism.
Deen’s sin was making Southern heritage palatable and popular.
While apologists for Southern heritage use the phrase “cultural cleansing”, I find the phrase far too condescending. What we are experiencing is cultural genocide.
The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Polish immigrant and noted attorney, Raphael Lemkin.
He described genocide as follows. Read and weep.
Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.
For more information enter the search term “rural purge” at Wikipedia.org.
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petticoat_Junction
Kenn Daily is the publisher of DailyKenn.com . Now 62 years old, Kenn formed his conservative views at the age of 14 and was an early member of Young Americans for Freedom. He is a vociferous anti-racist but sets himself apart from most conservatives by refusing to be bullied into silence regarding racial issues. Violent black crime is a signature issue of his website. Kenn is a semi-retired business owner. He lives in Indiana with his wife of 39 years. He has two grown children — a daughter and son — four grandchildren, and two granddogs.