An actor who starred in a sitcom featuring a car with a confederate flag has compared Beyoncé to a dog following her surprise release of two country songs.
According to Newsweek, “Dukes of Hazzard” actor John Schneider recently appeared on the OAN network, where he attacked the entertainment industry for not allowing conservatives to gatekeep country music.
“They’ve got to make their mark, like a dog at a dog walk park,” Schneider said of the “lefties,” “you know every dog has to mark every tree, so that’s what’s going on here.”
Beyoncé stunned the world by releasing “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” during Super Bowl LVIII, sharing news that she would drop a full-length album on March 29.
Schneider, who also had a key role in Tyler Perry’s “The Haves and the Have Nots,” was not the only one displeased by her move. Several country radio stations declined to play her songs.
Business Insider reported that a member of the Beyhive shared via X on Feb. 13 – two days after its release – that he received a rejection email after requesting Oklahoma’s country music station to play “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
The X user included a screenshot of the email, which quoted KYKC’s station manager, Roger Harris, saying, “We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.”
Several fans condemned the perceived snub on social media and others contacted the station demanding they correct the error, prompting KYKC to later announce that it would play “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
A spokesperson from South Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises (SCORE), the station’s parent company, reportedly said Harris was unaware of Beyoncé’s pivot to country music.
Harris – who said he would have responded similarly if someone requested a Rolling Stones song – noted that the station initially didn’t even have Beyoncé’s song file to add to the station’s playlist.
Director Ken Burns explored the history of country music and Black people’s contribution to it for his 2019 documentary, “Country Music,” examining African and African-American music and instruments’ contributions to developing the genre, Newsweek reported.
“African-American style was embedded in country music from the very beginning of its commercial history,” historian Bill C. Malone says in the documentary. “You can’t conceive of this music existing without this African-American infusion. But then, as the music developed professionally, too often, African-Americans were forgotten.”
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