Arkansas State Senator Kim Hendren, running for the U.S. Senate, does his bit for National Brotherhood Week:

Hendren explained, “I don’t use a teleprompter and occasionally I put my foot in my month.” At the meeting, Hendren addressed the comments that Sen. Schumer made shortly before last week’s meeting. Sen. Schumer, appearing on MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow Show, said “The hard right, which still believes that when the Federal Government moves, we chop off its hands, still believes in the traditional values kind of arguments, in strong foreign policy, all that is over.”

Hendren told me, “At the meeting I was attempting to explain that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’ I made the mistake of referring to Sen. Schumer as ‘that Jew’ and I should not have put it that way as this took away from what I was trying to say.”

What did he really mean: “that hooked-nose kike”?

And as long as he’s dragging “The Andy Griffith Show” into the equation, let me remind him that Sheriff Andy Taylor was a single parent who dated several women, didn’t wear a gun, had lax law enforcement (Otis the town drunk had a key to the jail cell), and what about that nellie never-married town clerk Howard Sprague? Family values, huh?

I concur with Steve: “And Republicans wonder why they struggle with minority communities.”

Update: Mr. Hendren has issued an apology:

“When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn’t because I don’t like Jewish people,” he said. He also added: “I shouldn’t have gotten into this Jewish business because it distracts from the issue.”

Yeah, that helps.