Dopecephus

This will probably surprise a few people, but at least no one can accuse me of that whole consistency/hobgoblin thing.

Let me start by saying that Hank Williams, Jr. is a blithering redneck idiot and a national embarrassment whose pride in his own ignorance and self-satisfaction at promoting the worst kind of Ugly American stereotypes are matched only by his complete lack of anything approaching talent. Now let me go on to say that the indignant furor over comments he made yesterday morning on Fox News Channel supposedly comparing Barack Obama to Hitler amounts to a really silly, media-generated overreaction. The reason is that Hank Williams, Jr. wasn't purposely attempting to draw a connection between President Obama and the most infamous mass-murdered in history.

As much as it pains me to defend this boob, anyone who watched the interview -- and it pains me even more to admit that I saw it live -- should have been able to grasp the point Williams was trying to make. See, in his booze-addled mind, not only is a casual golf game between Barack Obama and John Boehner on par with Benjamin Netanyahu yukking it up with Adolf Hitler -- since, obviously, the former two are comparable mortal enemies to the latter two -- but making this analogy on live television proves that Hank Williams, Jr. is just all kinds of clever. He's the thinking man's Larry the Cable Guy, if you will.

What Williams said was unbelievably ill-advised, but not for the reasons a lot of people think. He obviously doesn't like Barack Obama, that's true, and maybe he even thinks he's a threat to America and a danger to the world -- and he certainly proved the political codicil of Godwin's Law -- but that's not what he was trying to get across with his dumb crack. The truth is he's not a hateful fuck so much as he's just a dumb drunk who can't express himself properly. There's a difference.

Still, if all this outrage gets him banished from our culture forever, I guess the greater good is served. And I do have to give him credit for managing to make the regular clowns on Fox and Friends -- that would be the hosts -- look like rank amateurs for a change.