Quick Takes: Hank Williams Jr. jabs at Obama

Country singer Hank Williams Jr. is back in the political arena after a concert in Iowa on Friday during which he called President Obama “a Muslim president who hates the U.S.,” according to the Des Moines Register.

After performing his song “We Don’t Apologize for America,” Williams told an audience of about 8,500 that “we’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S., and we hate him,” drawing cheers from the crowd, the Register reported.

His latest album, “Old School, New Rules,” also includes some jabs at Obama, including the song “Take Back Our Country,” in which he sings “Hey Barack, pack your bags, head back to Chicago.”

Williams was dressed down last fall and ESPN dumped his theme song for its “Monday Night Football” telecast after the singer, in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” compared an Obama golf outing with House Speaker John Boehner to “Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.

— Randy Lewis

Nominees for TV news awards

Television productions that explored the children orphaned by Haiti’s devastating earthquake and took viewers aboard a boat smuggling refugees from North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa are among the nominees for International Emmy awards in the current affairs and news categories.

The eight nominees from seven countries announced this week include “Haiti’s Orphans: One Year After the Earthquake” on Canada’s CBC Television and “Extra: The RTL Magazine — The Merciless Traffic in the Flight From Africa” from Germany’s infoNetwork GmbH in current affairs.

Brazil’s TV Globo had two nominations for “Profession: Reporter — Children and Drugs: A Childhood Overtaken by Addiction” in current affairs and “Jornal Nacional — Rains in the Mountain Region of Rio” in news.

— Associated Press

Swift sets record with new single

Taylor Swift has scored another one for the record books, this time logging the best first-week digital sales for a single by a female artist for her new breakup song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which posted 623,000 paid downloads since its release last week.

That’s just 13,000 short of the overall digital single sales record set in 2009 by rapper Flo Rida with “Right Round,” according to Billboard, citing figures from Nielsen SoundScan. The song easily won the No. 1 slot on Billboard’s Digital Songs chart.

“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” becomes only the seventh single to have sold more than 500,000 digital copies in one week, Billboard notes.

It makes a strong start for Swift’s forthcoming album, “Red,” due for release on Oct. 22. Her previous album, “Speak Now,” sold 1.047 million copies in its first week of release in November 2010, the first CD to top the 1-million first-week sales mark in more than 51/2 years.

— Randy Lewis

It’s Broadway for Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone is coming back to Broadway — in a romantic comedy set in the porn industry.

Producers of David West Read’s comedy “The Performers” said Wednesday she will join Henry Winkler and “30 Rock” star Cheyenne Jackson in the play, which begins previews Oct. 23 at the Longacre Theatre.

It’s about two high school friends who reconnect at the Adult Film Awards in Las Vegas. Silverstone will play the girlfriend of one of the friends. She was last on Broadway in 2010 opposite Laura Linney in “Time Stands Still.”

—Associated Press