On the night Hank Williams Jr went to town

Hank Williams Jr's bid to simultaneously paint himself as some sort of victim and out-Nugent Ted Nugent continues with a Rolling Stone interview, in which he proves himself to be as ill-informed as he is short-of-thinking. It turns out when he went on Fox News and laid in to Obama and Boehner for having a game of golf together - the comparison he made was Hitler golfing with Netanyahu - why, he was the one with whom we should sympathise:

[Rolling Stone] How do you think Fox twisted your words around?

[Williams] Uh, number one, it's 6:30 in the morning, and you're sitting there to talk about your daddy's CD that's out. You know, come on. There, again, I think they did a great favor. If you can't make an analogy of something like that … my daughter said, "Daddy are you in trouble?' and I told her, "Let me tell you something, baby girl, if I'm in trouble, we're all in trouble." And guess what? I was right. There have been a lot of articles about, "My God, this world today, you can't say anything." Although, if you're a pretty radical left-wing democrat, you can say anything you want to – "Death to George Bush!" and start stabbing a steak with a knife like Rahm Emmanuel – which is on record, by the way. Oh yeah

So by "twisting his words around", Williams means "asking him a question in the morning". You wonder what time of day he stops appearing to be a right-wing conspiracy nut. Perhaps if it was 10am, he'd have gone with a 'like a lamb frolicking with a lion' analogy.

Oh, and the story "on the record" about Emmanuel? Never happened. There is a record of Emmanuel stabbing steaks and shouting names, but 'death to George Bush' is something of a stretch.

But is it even worth treating Williams with the sort of respect where you listen to his views as if they were informed and rational?

[RS]:Yeah, but when you talk about your Christian name …

[HWJr]:You know, we've got a President that does a call to the Koran or Mecca or whatever. That's what I meant. That's exactly what I meant. I won't be changing my name to whatever. That's exactly what I meant.

Jesus, man (no pun intended), if you're going to be the sort of numbskull who believes that Obama is a Muslim, and think that it matters anyway, at least try and give the impression you know something about Islam.

Hank Williams Junior then goes on to claim that Obama "hates America" which is proved by Obama's world tour where he went around apologising for the nation - no, me neither.

It's a nice piece by Rolling Stone - it's not even a case of giving enough rope for him to hang himself; Williams turns up with his own ready-to-go gibbet. I fear what's frightening, though, isn't the fundamentally ignorant people like Williams who have a platform; it's the large numbers of people who respect him and will assume he knows what he's talking about.

Oh, America.