Times Columnist Apologizes For Mormon Jab [UPDATED]

The New York Times offered no response tonight to inquiries about a columnist's jab at a symbol of the Mormon religion during last night's debate.

Charles Blow, an opinion columnist, tweeted his outrage at Mitt Romney's preference for two-parent families.

"Let me just tell you this Mitt 'Muddle Mouth': I'm a single parent and my kids are *amazing*! Stick that in your magic underwear," he wrote.

Mormon men and women wear "temple garments" beneath their clothes as a reminder of their religious commitments, a rough equivalent of Jews' yarmulkes or tzitzit.

It's difficult to imagine a Times writer making a similar joke about a Jewish politician.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, didn't respond to an email sent just before 6:00 p.m. today inquiring about the paper's reaction to the tweet. Blow also didn't respond to an email inquiry.

The Romney comment that provoked Blow's tweet was:

When you have 40 percent of kids being born out of wedlock, and among certain ethnic groups the vast majority being born out of wedlock, you ask yourself, how are we going to have a society in the future? Because these kids are raised in poverty in many cases, they're in abusive settings. The likelihood of them being able to finish high school or college drops dramatically in single-family homes. And we haven't been willing to talk about this.

UPDATE: Radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Romney about the tweet.

"That is a little surprising, I must admit. I guess we’re finding out for the first time that the media is somewhat biased," he joked.

Hewitt pressed him on the possibility of an anti-Mormon campaign.

"I don’t think that will be particularly helpful for their cause," Romney said. "The truth of the matter is, they’ve got a lot of ways to attack our nominee. They’re going to make their attacks on a personal basis. They really have a hard time defending President Obama on the basis of his economic record, on the basis of his foreign policy record — particularly given the developments in Iran as well as his mismanagement of Iraq and Afghanistan. So they’re going to make personal attacks.

"I think it’s going to wear very badly and the American people are not going to line up for that kind of, if you will, divisiveness and demonization of their fellow Americans," he said.

UPDATE: Blow tweeted an apology Friday morning (below), and Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy emails: " It is enough. We are in agreement with him that the comment was inappropriate and we're glad he acknowledged it."