In what is surely to be seen on the right as a victory over political correctness, ESPN, the ever more left-leaning sports network, has announced that country boy Hank Williams, Jr., and his rowdy, booming anthem that welcomed viewers to Monday Night Football for more than two decades, will be returning this season.

ESPN fired Williams six years ago for his sin of failing to worship at the altar of Obamanism.  For a single on-air comparison of Obama to Hitler, an offense that would go largely unremarked in this time of vile, scatological profanities aimed at our president by even anchor personalities, Hank's longtime association was ended with a terse announcement of termination.  That may not have signaled the beginning of ESPN's decline into political correctness, but it surely marked a waypoint on the leftward course that has continued, losing the network millions of subscribers year after year.

ESPN reverted back to its previous musical intro for MNF, but it failed to welcome you into the game with the boisterous enthusiasm of good ol' Bocephus and his driving anthem to you, everyman – who, blue or white collar, loved feeling, for that short while, like one of his rowdy friends as you sat back and cracked open a cold one, waiting for that opening kickoff.  That Williams off-air is a solid Republican and 2nd Amendment supporter provided a small bit of additional comfort when you knew that some smarmy ESPN talking head might berate you with some leftist agitprop before the game ended.

So is this return to the country meme acknowledgment by ESPN suits that their preferred chardonnay-sipping enlightened liberal audiences simply aren't sufficient to pay the bills, much less to generate a profit?  Are they finally recognizing what all those departing subscribers have been telling them loudly by the tens of thousands: "keep your damned politics outta my sports"?  Could it be that some common sense has soaked through those skulls marinated in urban elite political correctness?

The decision makers at ESPN, from executive suites and corporate board rooms down through every production facility, would do themselves well to listen to Hank's militant ode to conservative independence, "A Country Boy Can Survive," where Williams lays out a defiant code of self-reliance.  While most Americans can no longer live up to it, they still firmly embrace the sentiment.

I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids, and the dogs, and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk 'til dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke, too
Ain't too many things these old boys can't do
We grow good old tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

It would appear to this ol' small-town boy that country boy Hank Williams, Jr. most assuredly has.