On behalf of my wife Peg and our kids, Kelly and Bud, as well as our deceased dog Buck and his female reincarnation as Lucky, I would like to apologize to America for all the dumb stuff that my distant cousin Cliven has been saying.

Everyone who knows me well enough to say, “Hey, Al” knows that I am a male chauvinist pig well on his way to hating just about everybody. But my buddy Griff and I could not have remained such good friends if I were also a racist.

Likewise, I am not a freeloader. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to be one, but I can’t seem to pull it off.

So I have a lot of mixed feelings about Cliven.

On the one hand, he sure does know how to freeload. And you can’t help but admire a guy who can clean you out of house and home and then make it seem like it’s you who ought to be apologizing for not having even more that he can sponge off you.

On the other hand, he is just a continuous embarrassment because, let’s face it, the guy is more than a few cows short of a full herd. And it isn’t because the feds held onto some of them.

Listening to him and Kelly talking is like an IQ test. If you think that you are following what they are saying, you haven’t got any IQ, or any future hope of ever having any.

Peg has never cared for the fact that Cliven never takes off his cowboy hat, not even when he’s showering or he’s sleeping. And she thinks that he smells a little too much like cow fur.

Anyway, we are all truly sorry about all of the dumb stuff that Cliven has been saying. I hope that you’ll do me a favor and cut him some slack because I think that he’s been breathing cow gas for so long that he can’t tell the difference between it and real air.

P.S. Whenever I talk about my cousin, someone asks me where the name Cliven comes from. I’ll be damned if I know. But Peg had an uncle by marriage whose name was Harry Cloven. Everybody just called him “Hoof,” and I don’t think that he ever got within a hundred yards of any livestock. Go figure.