HANK WILLIAMS JR. COMPARES OBAMA TO HITLER!
That’s what the headlines screamed this week, when the singer’s comments led ESPN to pull Williams’ signature “Are You Ready for Some Football!” opening to the Monday Night Football broadcast. Now, I’m no Hank Jr. fan, but at no time did I hear him suggest the President shares any similarities with the Nazi despot.
“It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, okay?,” Williams said during an interview on Fox.
The “it” to which Williams was referring was a highly publicized “golf summit” in June between Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker John Boehner and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
What I don’t recall is hearing Williams go on to say, “Now, of course, in this scenario, Obama is Hitler and Biden is Heinrich Himmler; and John Boehner is Benjamin Netanyahu and John Kasich is Ehud Barak.
Good lord! Take a deep breath, people!
Yes, Hank Jr. employed an ill-advised metaphor to make a point, but that point is more off target than his statement, or his equally clumsy, sort-of apology.
“My analogy was extreme,” Williams explained in a statement on his Web site, “but it was to make a point. I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me — how ludicrous that pairing was. They’re polar opposites and it made no sense.”
That’s where Williams makes no sense. The day opposing political leaders can’t be near on
another without genocide-worthy tension is the day when our republic degenerates into a despotic cesspool.
Last time I checked, the President, Vice President and members of Congress swore to uphold the very same Constitution of the United States and not the interests of their parties — be they of the Democrat, Republican or Tea variety. But the most influential supporters of those leaders demand confrontation, not collaboration, and our 24-hour news cycles offer an endless loop of carefully crafted positions from which only a self-flagellatory politician would dare stray.
Why on God’s green fairway should Republicans and Democrats not play golf together?
And as for Hank Jr., here’s a thought. You’re an artist. If you’re so hacked off about the leadership of the country, how about expressing your displeasure in your music instead of on Fox News.
“Working class people are hurting,” you said in a statement this week, “and it doesn’t seem like anybody cares.”
I know you’d have to take a break from singing about whiskey, women and all your rowdy friends, but maybe you’d be a powerful voice for those working class people who are hurting. There are people within your genre who are doing it well, country singers such as James McMurtry and Iris DeMent.
No, they’ll never get a gig singing on Monday Night Football. In fact, if they did, they’d probably worry because not enough people were mad at them. Artists with conviction do it the hard way. They labor to give color, shape, sound or voice to emotions most of us can feel but never effectively express.
Effective leaders are the same way. They present a genuine portrait of who they are and what they stand for, and we as voters choose the candidates in whom we believe we can put our trust to make the best decisions. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
When a simple golf game evokes ghosts of the Holocaust from a hungover country singer, it’s time to take a mulligan.
