TV bosses have ditched Hank Williams, JR.'s iconic football anthem from a sports show in America after the singer compared U.S. President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler in a TV interview.
The opinionated star was a guest on Fox news show Fox & Friends on Monday morning (03Oct11) when he went too far in a rant about Democrat Obama's summer golf game with Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican.
He said, "That's like Hitler playing golf with (Jewish Israeli leader Benjamin) Netanyahu," and later referred to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as "the enemy".
His ill-advised comments immediately landed the right-wing star in big trouble with TV bosses at sports network Espn, who yanked his weekly kickoff anthem, Are You Ready For Some Football?, from their Monday Night Football show.
A spokesman says, "We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast."
Williams, Jr. later released a statement attempting to explain himself, insisting he was simply "misunderstood".
He wrote, "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."