(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) John Schneider, the actor who catapulted to stardom as Bo Duke on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard, said the show’s villain, the corrupt Boss Hogg, would have had too much integrity for the current Democratic administration.
“I would much prefer Boss Hogg for president over this current clown, just because of the honesty of his dishonesty,” Schneider told Headline USA in a recent phone interview. “He was totally up front about his personality and his tendency to bend the truth.”
The comments came following a recent anti-conservative smear by leftist Hollywood producer Norman Lear, who created many ’70s sitcoms including All in the Family.
While celebrating his 100th birthday, Lear penned an op-ed in the New York Times stating that Archie Bunker—All in the Family‘s working-class, xenophobic lead character—would have been a supporter of former President Donald Trump.
Actor Rob Reiner, best known for his role as “Meathead” on the show, also weighed in, telling CNN’s Jim Acosta that Bunker would have jumped off the Trump Train following Jan. 6.
“I do think that Archie would have been really upset to see cops beaten by insurgents,” Reiner said. “And then to find out as time goes by that Trump was at the hub of all this, and it was Trump’s operation altogether, I think he would have gone the way of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.”
With the two limousine liberals attempting to use a 50-year-old sitcom character as a political bludgeon, Schneider—an outspoken conservative who makes regular appearances on Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network—welcomed the opportunity to respond in kind.
“I’m gonna compare Boss Hogg to a rattlesnake, and I’ll compare ‘Brandon’ to a cottonmouth,” Schneider said.
While a rattlesnake lets you know it’s there, “the terrible thing about a cottonmouth is when it sees you coming it will get quieter,” he said.
In contrast with President Joe Biden’s constant gaslighting, Schneider noted that the Hogg character—portrayed by the late Sorrell Booke—demonstrated at least a shred of moral fiber and “would come to our rescue” if the Duke boys ever faced any real trouble from beyond the relatively safe confines of the fictional Hazzard County.
“Boss Hogg is far too honest,” Schneider said. “Boss Hogg had far too much integrity and humanity to ever have anything to do with the Biden administration.”
LOSING ITS CHARGE
Schneider—who remains active as a filmmaker and musician, producing a movie and an album per year from his home studio in Holden, La.—also addressed the recent announcement by Dodge that its next-gen models of Chargers and Challengers—two classic muscle cars—would be going full electric.
“It’s a sign of the lunacy of the Left,” he said. “I believe it’s also a sign of the total disconnect between the manufacturer and the consumer. … Apparently, they forgot about the great, sexy cars of the ’70s.”
The Dukes’ car—a blaze-orange, 1969 Charger with the doors welded shut—remains one of the most iconic vehicles in television history, despite the cancel-culture controversy that surrounds the Confederate flag on top of it.
Schneider—who has replicas of the car, known as the “General Lee,” at his home—said he considers himself to be an “automobile enthusiast” and a “motorist” who enjoys driving for its own sake.
He said he thought the current push toward electric vehicles would be a passing fad, like the era of using 3-d glasses in movie theaters.
“I’ve got nothing against electric vehicles,” he said, noting that he himself once owned a Fisker.
“But they are just a side dish on the menu of transportation—they are not the only main course, and I don’t believe ever will be,” he continued. “It’s a gimmick—electric cars are amazing, but in my mind they are nothing more than a gimmick.”
While some companies, such as Nikola, are attempting to develop heavy-duty batteries for trucks and buses, Schneider doubted that any could ever meet the industrial demands for the backhoes, dumptrucks, cranes and 18-wheelers that drive America’s economy.
And even if they did, such batteries would require “a generator the size of Rhode Island,” he said.
“People who charge their vehicles and believe that they’re doing something for the environment—do they believe that at the end of that big, black cord that they plug their Tesla into … Is it butterfly wings? Is it wind energy? Is it unicorn farts?” Schneider asked.
Since COVID, Schneider said he has stopped flying and finds himself constantly on the road while maintaining a busy schedule of appearances and performances.
Traveling with his wife, film producer Alicia Allain, the couple might pull an all-nighter to get from La. to L.A.
“You can’t drive to California and share driving and get to Los Angeles in 23 hours in an electric vehicle,” he noted.
STILL ON SCREEN
In between the “pins on a calendar” commitments to bookings that were waylaid by the pandemic, Schneider is currently devoting “every waking moment” to a new movie, To Die For, which will wrap its principal filming next week.
The politically inspired work is about “a veteran who has the opportunity to die for his flag in his front yard,” Schneider said tantilizingly. “I started writing it as soon as I realized that the theft of the 2020 election was going to go through.”
Schneider said the film was loosely inspired by true-life events.
“I read a story about a year ago about a man who had a restraining order filed against him and he could no longer drive his truck within 100 yards of the local high school with the American flag flying in the back of it,” he said.
Drawing from his own upbringing in small-town New York, Schneider’s character in the film is banned from displaying the flag, ironically at the very same school where he learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
“It’s all about a man’s love for his flag, his respect for his country and his inability to understand how taking a knee at a high school football game … gets accolades from the NFL rather than being shunned by the local powers that be,” Schneider said.
He plans to debut the film on Oct. 20 via his streaming platform, cineflixdod.com, with the possibility of a distribution deal through Fox Nation or another service currently in discussion.
The serious nature of the new project is a far cry from some of Schneider’s other recent cinematic efforts that have a distinctively Dukes-like feel to them, including Christmas Cars, Stand on It and the sequel, Poker Run.
“There is a recipe to Southern horsepower comedy, and I may be the only one who knows what it is,” Schneider said when asked if he would ever consider a modern remake of the Dukes.
He was less-than-complimentary of Warner Brothers’ 2005 Dukes of Hazzard movie flop starring Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson.
“It would have to be better to suck,” he said. “They missed the heart and soul of it.”
HONORING HIS INFLUENCES
Schneider continues to keep up regularly with his surviving Dukes costars, including Tom Wopat (Luke Duke), Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke) and former U.S. Rep. Ben Jones, D-Ga., who portrayed Hazzard mechanic Cooter Davenport and now operates several popular memorabilia shops catering to the show’s fans.
“We are what the 7-year-old in you would like us to be,” Schneider said. “We are the best of friends,” despite having contrasting personalities.
Of the veteran actors who surrounded the young cast, Schneider said he particularly laments the loss of Denver Pyle, the actor who portrayed Duke patriarch Uncle Jesse.
“Denver was to John Schneider what Uncle Jesse was to Bo,” he said, calling Pyle not only a “mentor” but “my shoulder to lean on, my arm to cry on” through difficult periods of his life.
Another close friend of Schneider’s whom he continues to honor is legendary country singer Johnny Cash.
In the late 1980s, after the two filmed the star-studded made-for-television movie Stagecoach together, Schneider found himself on tour to promote his own string of No. 1 country hits.
In between, he wound up taking residence at the home of Cash and his wife, June Carter, in Hendersonville, Tenn.
“I was touring and needed a place to stay—John and I spent all that time together during the movie and we hit it off wonderfully,” Schneider said.
“It was really just like two buddies talking … one’s got an extra room—why spend the money?” he continued. “We were just friends. It wasn’t about the music, it wasn’t about the celebrity—we just hit it off on many levels and could talk for hours” about topics including their shared love for history and Cash’s interest in coin-collecting.
Schneider said he was intentionally channeling Cash in the song “Younger Man” from his most recent album, Southern Ways.
Cash “had told me one day I would find a song that would be the quintessential love song,” Schneider said, noting that with his third marriage to Allain he finally had someone to sing it to.
However, after hearing the playback of the initial cut, he added in a distinctive rasp to the vocals.
“I felt when I heard it, ‘I sound like I did when I was 20,'” Schneider said. “I went back in, and I intentionally made the singer older to begin with,” borrowing from Cash’s signature baritone while trying to avoid having it be “a Johnny Cash impersonation,” and finding more of his own voice as the song progresses.
LOUISIANA LIVING
Even with his many projects and commitments, Schneider still finds time to enjoy the surroundings of his adopted state, Louisiana.
“I fell in love with Louisiana because of the people, the work ethic, certainly the food… the million shades of green that I’m looking at right now,” he said.
“The fact that there are gun stores everywhere, the fact that open-carry is prevalent here—I love that,” he added.
Despite the unpredictable weather—including Hurricane Ida, which wrecked his 58-acre property last year, leaving at least one “General Lee” lodged up in a tree—Schneider said he felt a kindred spirit with the fiercely independent thinking of Cajun country.
Residents of the state, in turn, have seemed to embrace him with open arms.
“Most people I come into contact with think I am Bo—and in many regards, I am,” Schneider said, recalling one of his very first lines in the Dukes of Hazzard pilot episode:
“I was cutting a board in front of an orphanage [and said], ‘I choose this life, not because I don’t know any better but because I believe it is better—and I’m not gonna let anything or anybody pollute the well where I drink,” Schneider recalled.
“I think it’s ironic that that is one of the first lines I uttered,” he added.
Now, 44 years later, he’s living it.
“The Duke boys fought the system, and so do I—and I don’t know any other way,” he said.
One thing Schneider won’t do is venture into the far-left New Orleans, even though the city is less than an hour’s drive away.
“I’m a firm believer that the mayor of New Orleans has lost her mind, so I don’t go there anymore,” Schneider said.
Under the stewardship of Mayor LaToya Cantrell, crime in the Big Easy has surged to give it one of the highest murder rates in the world, Fox News reported in July.
Although the city’s political landscape may be a lost cause, Schneider said he’s hoping a wave of backlash will drive both Cantrell and Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards out of office.
Schneider said he’s supporting Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser’s 2023 gubernatorial campaign—although he hasn’t ruled out the prospect that he himself might one day run for office.
“It has to be somebody who loves this state and its people … somebody who loves freedom—and we don’t have that right now, in my opinion,” he said.
But he added that others were welcome to respectfully disagree.
“I do believe in other people’s right to be wrong,” he said, his mind quickly homing in on the inspiration for yet another potential creative project. “That’s’ a country song right there.”
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at truthsocial.com/@bensellers.
