Flag Backlash Means Paint Job For Hazzard Car

The controversial Confederate flag on the Dukes of Hazzard car will be painted over with an American flag, its owner says.

Golfer Bubba Watson, who owns the iconic General Lee car, tweeted he would replace the image on the car's roof in the wake of the recent public backlash against the flag.

Watson bought the car for $110,000 in 2012 and tweeted: "All men ARE created equal. I believe that so I will be painting the American flag over the roof of the General Lee."

The Dukes of Hazzard had its re-runs recently pulled from the US television schedule, having originally run between 1979 and 1985, but television network TV Land would not say whether this was a reaction to the flag painted on the car roof.

After nine people were killed in a shooting at a predominantly black church in South Carolina on 17 June, the state's governor called for the Confederate flag to be banned from flying over the capitol building.

The suspect in the shootings, Dylann Roof, 21, had posed with a Confederate flag in photos posted on a website that also displayed a racist manifesto.

The governors of Virginia and North Carolina also said they would wipe the hated symbol from the plates of their drivers' licence plates.

Many of the country's retailers, including Walmart, eBay and Amazon, have stopped selling merchandise with the Confederate flag.