(ESPN) — Hank Williams Jr. and his iconic theme song will not return to ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” the network announced Thursday.
In the wake of Williams using an analogy involving Adolf Hitler and President Barack Obama to make a political point on the Fox News Channel, Williams’ “All My Rowdy Friends” will no longer be part of the MNF opening.
“We have decided to part ways with Hank Williams, Jr,” ESPN said in a statement. “We appreciate his contributions over the past years. The success of Monday Night Football has always been about the games and that will continue.” On his own website, Williams said he was the one who made the decision.
“After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision,” he wrote. “By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It’s been a great run.”
Hear Hank Williams Jr.’s A Country Boy Can Survive
In an interview Monday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Williams, unprompted, said of Obama’s outing on the links with House Speaker John Boehner: “It’d be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.”
Asked to clarify, Williams said, “They’re the enemy,” adding that by “they” he meant Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
ESPN pulled Williams’ opening to Monday night’s Indianapolis-Tampa Bay game and issued a statement saying: “While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.”
Williams, through his publicist, said on Monday: “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. They’re polar opposites and it made no sense. They don’t see eye-to-eye and never will. I have always respected the office of the president.”
Tuesday, he issued another statement.”The thought of the leaders of both parties jukin and high fiven on a golf course, while so many families are struggling to get by simply made me boil over and make a dumb statement,” Williams wrote on Facebook and his website. “I am very sorry if it offended anyone.”
Williams’ song has been part of “Monday Night Football” since 1991 on both ESPN and ABC. He is a Grammy award winner who also was a three-time entertainer of the year from the Academy of Country Music in the 1980s.
![Bristol Palin Gets In Confrontation, But Was It For Her Reality Show? (WIDK)
Posted to WIDK by Bob Williams
(Breeanna Hare, CNN) — Bristol Palin was caught having a heated exchange about her mother over the weekend as she reportedly taped her upcoming BIO Channel reality show.
While hanging out at a place called the Saddle Ranch in L.A. and enjoying a night of mechanical bull riding, TMZ reports that a heckler yelled out at Palin, “Do you ride Levi like that? Your mother’s a whore.”
As cameras rolled, Palin marched over to the offender and demanded to know why he’d say such things about her mother, including that she’s “evil.” TMZ reports that Bristol asked the heckler if the reason he disliked her mother was because he was gay.
The Palin family’s attorney tells CNN in a statement regarding the incident, “Bristol Palin was approached in a confrontational and inappropriate manner when two men aggressively shouted expletives aimed at her in reference to her mother. Bristol responded to the unprovoked verbal assault by calmly standing her ground and defending her family. The situation ended with no incident, and accusing her of homophobia is completely unfounded and totally misstates her views.”
The network for her upcoming reality show didn’t have a comment on what happened, but the rumor is that Palin’s co-star Kyle Massey thinks the showdown was all for the program’s cameras. TMZ cites anonymous tipsters who say Massey isn’t pleased with the direction the show’s taking. However, a source close to the production of the reality series maintains that the production team had nothing to do with the heckler’s outburst.
Palin announced in May that she was moving in with fellow “DWTS” contender Massey and his younger brother, Christopher, when she relocated to Los Angeles.
“Since [‘Dancing With the Stars’],” the BIO Channel said in a statement at the time, “Bristol, Kyle, and Kyle’s brother…have become best friends; so much so, that since Bristol and Tripp have to move to Los Angeles for her new job, she decides to move in with the Massey brothers who are also about to realize how much their lives are about to change.”
Original Article](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls8sxoJ7g31qfuohco1_400.jpg)
![‘Dancing With The Stars’ Premiere: Chaz Bono Cha-Chas Into Millions of Homes (WIDK)
(ABC By LAUREN EFFRON and KEVIN DOLAK) — Chaz Bono cha cha’d onto the floor on the season premiere of “Dancing With The Stars” along with his partner Lacey Schwimmer, shimmying and shaking his way into millions of homes across America.
The judge’s verdict when the duo completed their number Monday night? A respectable 17 out of 30, with judge Carrie Ann Inaba telling Bono: “I think people have been waiting all night to see you Chaz and you did not disappoint. You can dance!”
“It felt good. It was fun. I really wanna enjoy every second of this, even the tough times,” Bono told “Nightline” anchor Cynthia McFadden.
“You’re in a state of nervousness all night. You don’t get to sit back and enjoy it … I had a great time doing it I think it was entertaining. I was in a total daze — you don’t think about the crowd,” he added. “I’d like to be back as long as I can.”
Controversy has surrounded Bono, 42, since producers of the hit ABC dancing reality competition announced in August that not only would he be a Season 13 cast member but also be paired with a female dance partner.
Backlash immediately erupted over his selection as the first transgender person to ever compete on the show. Various parenting, religious and political activists called for a boycott of the show, some saying that watching Bono would be “confusing for children.”
“I’m just a regular guy,” Bono said in a Sept. 6 interview with “Good Morning America.” “All these ideas that children shouldn’t watch me, I’m going to be confusing, all this stuff, it’s crazy.”
No stranger to the public eye, Bono was first introduced to the world as Chastity, a golden-haired little girl in the arms of her famous parents, Sonny and Cher, but underwent gender reassignment surgery last year and legally changing his name to Chaz.
“This is how I was born. I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind,” Bono told McFadden in a May interview.
A long-time advocate of LGBT issues, Bono has been outspoken about his life-altering decision to “transition,” changing physically female to male. He revealed the emotional process in his Emmy-nominated documentary, “Becoming Chaz,” and in his latest memoir, “Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man.”
Before signing on with “Dancing With the Stars,” Bono talked openly with “Nightline” about his decision to go under the knife.
“It’s actually pretty simple if you look at it,” Bono told McFadden in May. “We all in the womb start out as female and then hormones come and we either stay female or we become male. I think of it as hormones that, you know, went in the brain but not in the body, and that’s all being transgender is. It’s just that the sex of your body and the gender of the brain don’t match up.”
It took Bono nearly four decades to reach the point at which he decided he wanted to have gender reassignment surgery to become a male. The process began after Bono’s 40th birthday in March 2009, more than a decade after he had publicly come out as a lesbian.
Bono began receiving testosterone injections, which helped make his voice deeper and produced facial hair. He also had his breasts surgically removed.
“If you are a man and you have breasts, any man would want to have them removed,” Bono said in the May interview. “It is scary for a woman to think about it because it is something that they are really attached to. Being male and having breasts is about the worst thing I could imagine.”
Anatomically, Bono remains a woman from the waist down and said he doesn’t have any plans to undergo corrective surgery yet because that type of surgery is still risky.
“I’m just kind of waiting to see what happens and hoping that there are medical advances made and it gets a little better because right now the risk-reward ratio is just not quite right,” he said at the time. “The majority of [transgender people] don’t have bottom surgery because of that.”
Original Article](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrtr0xBD0f1qfuohco1_500.jpg)
![Miss Universe Hopeful Told to Wear PANTIES (WIDK)
(NBC Miami By Greg Wilson) – Miss Universe officials have a message for Catalina Robayo, Colombia’s entry into Monday’s contest: Don’t forget to wear underwear.
Robayo, one of 89 beauties from around the world competing to win the Donald Trump-owned contest, has been reprimanded for making appearance in tiny skirts - with no panties.
“Colombia had to be spoken to and told she needed to wear underpants as what she was doing was totally inappropriate,” a source told Fox News. “People have been pretty upset by it; there have been photos and media appearances where she has completely had her crotch out.”
The contest, being held in Sao paulo, Brazil, might benefit from controversy, but going commando goes too far.
“Our supervisors talked to all of the contestants about dressing appropriately, and one of our PR people spoke to [Robayo] and apparently she said she was wearing underwear, said Miss Universe President Paula Shugart. “But regardless, it created quite a stir here for a few days.”
The pageant earlier returned bikini bottoms from sponsor Catalina Brasil Swimwear after they were ruled too skimpy for network television.
The contest airs Monday at 9 pm ET.
Original Article](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lraby4MjXm1qfuohco1_400.jpg)
