Rob Port • October 4, 2011
Appearing on Fox & Friends, country music icon Hank Williams Jr. compared Barack Obama to Hitler. Williams said President Obama and Speaker John Boehner’s recent golf outing “would be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli leader) Benjamin Netanyahu.”
In response, ESPN has ended Williams’ long-time association with Monday Night Football through the use of his music.
After ESPN dropped Hank Williams Jr. from opening Monday Night Football tonight after Williams’ controversial comments Monday about President Obama, the singer now says he was“misunderstood.”
Says ESPN, in a statement: “While Hank Williams Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize he is closely linked to our company through the opening to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.”
Meanwhile, the NFL is considering Madonna to be the halftime entertainment for the next Super Bowl. Madonna also compared John McCain to Hitler back in 2008:
Madonna kicked off her Sticky & Sweet Tour in the U.K. Saturday, and stirred up a beehive of controversy by comparing Republican presidential nominee John McCain to Adolf Hitler in a video montage during the show.
During the song “Get Stupid,” Madonna flashed images of McCain alongside photos of Hitler and brutal Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, as well as images of destruction and global warming, according to British paper The Times.
By contrast, in the next segment of the performance, she used the image of Democratic nominee Barack Obama alongside pictures of John Lennon, Mahatma Ghandi and Al Gore.
I can understand ESPN canning Hank Williams’ Jr. I don’t necessarily like it, but ESPN is a private company and can use whatever music they want in their productions. And I understand the impulse to want to avoid political controversy.
It’s just be nice if that was equally applied. It seems as those celebrities expressing the most extreme and vile political viewpoints are given a pass, whereas conservatives aren’t.
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