As the question of the appropriateness of flying the Confederate flag swells in the media, leftist outlet The Atlantic is singling out a beloved 1980s television program featuring a very famous '69 Dodge Charger for popularizing what is viewed as a symbol of hate.

It's them Duke boys! Writer Megan Garber says of all the things from the last 150 years of Confederate history, the one thing most responsible for normalizing the Confederate flag was its appearance on the roof of the bright orange General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard. Quoting the Waylon Jennings-penned theme song, identifying the Duke brothers as "good ol' boys" was what solidified the symbol of that ethos, writes Garber. She continues:

'Just a good ol’ boys never meanin’ no harm.' Which implies, of course, that harm is somehow part of the equation to begin with. The pre-emptive defensiveness here is telling: 'The Dukes of Hazzard' solidified the idea that the flag could have—or at least could claim to have—an alternate meaning besides the original one of defiant racism. But it also makes clear how intricately layered those meanings are into one symbol.

In the 2005 film remake of the show, the flag was still there much to Garber's dismay. But to her delight, more recent appearances of the General Lee, along with original cast members John Schneider and Tom Wopat, in commercials, the flag has been removed. But that's not good enough for Garber who laments all of the places that flag will remain after the media storm quells:

If the Confederate flag is to be “removed,” in any comprehensive way, from American infrastructures if not from American memories, the removal will have to contend not just with the flags that fly over state capitols, or with the images stamped onto government-issued license plates. It will also have to contend with Johnny Knoxville, with Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Tom Petty, with Kanye West—with all the flags and non-flags that, while they are no longer available for purchase at Walmart and Sears, remain available across the Internet. It will have to contend with the places that insist, contra history and common sense, that a flag is just a flag. And that history can’t be painful in the present.