I think my brother watched it. I’m sure Daisy Dukes distracted him from racist symbols.
I was too busy watching Diff’rent Strokes.
<slowly raises hand>
Yes, guilty here. I mainly watched it because, to me, Bo was just so damn cute. I feel nothing when I see him now, but back then…
I do remember wondering what the big deal was about Daisy Duke. I never found her (and still don’t) all that attractive.
I wasn’t a kid, but I’d watch it occasionally and was never offended by the confederate flag on the General Lee. But then, I don’t think I was looking for offense – I mean, the car was named after a Confederate general, and even that never fazed me.
I think, in retrospect (and it has been years and years, I never saw the show in syndicated reruns) that any racial inferences were overshadowed by the portrayal of the Duke family as kind people who were always going out of their ways to help others and whose only collective fault was their unwillingness to stop moonshining or to capitulate to Boss Hogg. (And everyone else’s portrayal as being simply clueless, even in their corruption.) It seemed that they were, as the song suggested, “good old boys” in the true sense of the phrase, not with the connotations that moniker can hold now.
I, too, attended a battle-flag-waivin’, Dixie-playin’ high school in Texas (Jack C Hays in Buda, if ya care to know), but never encountered anti-flag sentiments among the tiny minority of african-american students…they wore it on their band & athletic uniforms and painted it on thier faces for pep rallies just like everyone else. The only voice of dissent in my day (1992-96) came from 1 politically inclined hispanic girl. After I left, the NAACP decided that it could no longer permit the use of the flag, and pressured the school board and the UIL to effectively ban it without student input. Ah, well…
Ooh! And we had a model of the General Lee in the Speech & Debate Center for a while, too…
My lil’ brother has the door from one of the cars used on the show hanging in his office.
And I had the TeeVee tray as well.
okay, that’s all…
Quick question-I never really watched the show-which one was Luke and which one was Bo? I can never remember…
Luke - brown hair, played by Tom Wopat
Bo - blond hair, played by Jon Schneider
I have fond but vague memories of an episode when the characters were watching home movies, including one of a younger Jesse Duke and Jefferson Davis Hogg, when they were friends and running 'shine together. Ed Little had pulled them over and made them stand at attention while he “searched” their car, which included taking a short but strong knife, stabbing it into the fender, then ripping the fender off the car.
For some reason, this never fails to crack me up.
I also strongly recommend the movie Super Troopers if you liked the Ed Little character and don’t object to lowbrow humour.
I watched. My mother watched. Hell, my grandmother watched.
The Dukes just seemed so nice that you just knew racism never entered their minds. It really wasn’t an issue. I’d imagine Uncle Jesse turnin’ the shotgun on dem boys iffin’ they was to reject somebody based on color. Them Dukes was good people.
I owned several General Lee toy cars. I had t-shirts, sheets, a Tyco slot-car set. Never once did that flag mean anything more to me than a battle-charge horn and an impossibly high jump on a dirt road.
If anything, the show taught me more bad about the police than the flag.
I may have watched it a few times to see why it was so popular, but I never got into the “super-vehicle” shows of the 80’s.
Yes, I love gadgets, but I never understood the attraction of shows like DoH, Airwolf, or Knight Rider. 
Don’t forget STREETHAWK.
And then several years later, THUNDER IN PARADISE.
oof, bad tv. But I loved me some Knight Rider and Airwolf – STFU. I was 11.
Hey, don’t overlook the bouncing 4x4 in The Fall Guy.
And Blue Thunder came out around the same time as Airwolf, but it was based on a movie.