“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,’” the Disney-owned sports cable network said Monday afternoon its statement.
“We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.”
For more than two decades, Williams has been the voice of the “Monday Night Football” theme song.
Williams on Monday morning had compared the recent “golf summit” between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner as “one of the biggest political mistakes ever.”
“It would be like Hitler playing golf with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Williams said on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.”
Surprised show host Brian Kilmeade asked Williams to explain, and the singer did: “They’re the enemy... Obama! And Biden! Are you kidding? The Three Stooges.”
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."
Williams, perhaps best known for his "are you ready for some football?" lead-in to ESPN's Monday Night Football, Monday compared this summer's so-called golf summit between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner as "one of the biggest political mistakes ever."
As Williams put it on Fox News' Fox & Friends: "It would be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli leader) Benjamin Netanyahu."
When asked on Fox to explain his analogy, Williams said Obama and Vice President Biden are "the enemy."
In a statement Monday night, Williams says that with his comment about Obama and Boehner playing golf this summer he was "simply trying to show how stupid it seemed to me -- how ludicrous that pairing was." Williams says Boehner and Obama "are polar opposites and it made no sense. They don't see eye-to-eye and never will."
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