Six Years After Obama/Hitler Comparison, Monday Night Football Brings Back Hank Williams Jr. Theme Song

Rick Diamond/Getty Images

Six Years After Obama/Hitler Comparison, Monday Night Football Brings Back Hank Williams Jr. Theme Song

Rick Diamond/Getty Images

For years, the veteran country star Hank Williams Jr. opened every weekly broadcast of Monday Night Football with a new version of his legendarily cheesy party anthem “All My Rowdy Friends.” But in a Fox & Friends appearance in 2011, Williams fumed about watching then-Speaker Of The House John Boehner play golf with then-president Barack Obama, saying, “Come on. That’d be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu. Not hardly.” (Obama was Hitler in that equation.) ESPN fired him from those Monday Night Football broadcasts soon afterward. But now that we’re living in Trump’s America, ESPN has apparently decided that it’s now OK to have Williams back singing on TV every week.

Back when Williams originally made those comments, ESPN made a statement, saying, “We are extremely disappointed with his comments and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.” But now, without making reference to the man’s political beliefs, ESPN is welcoming him back with open arms. ESPN senior vice president of events and studio production Stephanie Druley tells The Tennesseean, “I think it’s a return to our past in that it’s such an iconic song associated with football. It was the original. It belongs to Monday Night Football. It really is about returning to what fans know. It’s a Monday night party, and that’s what we’re all hoping to get back to.”

ESPN itself quotes Williams as saying, “I hope there will be some happy people on Monday night again. It feels natural, fulfilling and satisfying at this point when you’ve kind of done it all.”

Williams, an outspoken right-wing nutball, never apologized for those comments. He also famously told a 2012 live crowd, “We’ve got a Muslim for a president who hates cowboys, hates cowgirls, hates fishing, hates farming, loves gays, and we hate him!” It sure says something about today’s political climate that we’re letting this fucker back on TV every week.

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