ESPN is telling Hank Williams Jr. that he’s not ready for football, after the country singer compared invoked the name of Hitler in an angry rebuke of President Obama’s recent "golf summit" with Republican House Speaker John Boehner, reports EW.com’s Inside TV blog.
The singer told "Fox & Friends" that the golf game “would be like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli leader Benjamin] Netanyahu," according to the piece.
Williams has been opening “Monday Night Football,” with his voice asking viewers, "Are you ready for some football?,” since 1989.
"While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to ‘Monday Night Football.’ We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast," ESPN said in a statement.
Williams said he was "misunderstood," reports TMZ.com.
"Some of us have strong opinions and are often misunderstood. My analogy was extreme — but it was to make a point. I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me — how ludicrous that pairing was," he said in a statement.
Here’s the video:
Why are we asking celebrities to weigh in on candidates anyway? What are their qualifications to be pundits? I get that the 24-hour “news” networks need to fill time, but who really CARES what celebrities think????
Google “bush hitler comparison” and see that even moveon.org is guilty of the same tactic.
In the dictionary next to redneck is a picture of Hank Williams, jr.