Way back in the lounge band days, I typically sang two or three songs by Hank Williams, Jr. each night.

At the time, Hank Jr. was a huge star and justifiably so. Few can equal his Old Man’s prowess as a songwriter, but Junior wrote and performed more than a handful of genuinely great honky tonk songs. I enjoyed them at the time and a few of them have grown old with me. I still get a kick out of “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” and “Family Tradition.”

When it came out, “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” was a terrific song if only because it absolutely captured a significant part of the maturation process of the Down South Good Ol’ Boy. It’s that point in life when, suddenly, family and job and kiddos segue into the high priority side of existence, and the weekend mentality of "drink/hangover/drink/hangover/do-it-again-til-Monday" became an increasingly difficult thing to pull off. But there’s always that one last guy who never can quite make the jump to Adulthood and can’t ever grow up -- and Junior's song nailed that beautifully.

To me, the song was ruined by the increasingly over-the-top and exponential bombast of “Monday Night Football,” where its original place as the theme song was a brilliant idea — but where the necessity of explosions and special effects and more cheerleaders, mandated by college educated studio execs, became a disturbing example of media overkill for the sake of it. A few years later, those same sort of television rodents would invent the Kardashians.

Anyhoo, no worries. Not any more.

For the time being, anyway, network execs at ESPN, current home of the “Monday Night Football” franchise, have yanked the tune over comments Junior made in which he “compared Obama to Hitler.” Yank the tune? Please! Shoulda been done years ago. But because of Hank's comments?

Well, in fact — unless I’m reading it wrong — Hank DIDN’T compare Obama to Hitler.

If one reads the text of the reporter Gretchen Carson's question and how Hank answered, it’s actually Boehner he compares to Hitler. Carson reacts to a Williams comment and says, "You mean when John Boehner played golf with President Obama?"

And Williams responded by comparing the pairing to "Hitler playing with Netanyahu." Boehner was the first reference in Carson's question, and as such matches up with Hitler in the structure of Williams' analogy.

Or, really, he’s not comparing anyone to Hitler.

What it clearly is, is an analogy suggesting that Obama and Boehner are as unlikely a pair to play golf together as Hitler and Netanyahu would be — except for the fact that Hitler’s dead.

That’s all it is. Junior could have said it was like Buddy Ryan playing golf with Tom Landry and it would be the same thing. Or Charlie Sheen playing with that idiot who took his place on “Two and a Half Men.” 

Now, if Hank had said, “Y’know, Obama is a racist who hates Jews and is on track to kill 6 million of them …” THAT’S comparing him to Hitler.

I think Hank’s a moron for saying it the way he did – not so much for the analogy itself, but because he should know better in the pervasing climate of springing-bear-trap, politically correct reactionary kooks.

In the meantime, he still wrote some really good country songs.