Alec Baldwin’s been sticking his foot in his mouth a lot more than usual lately – at least when it comes to his off-color jokes. Last week he was on “Late Night” and told David Letterman he wanted more kids. But after his bad experience with ex-wife Kim Basinger, Baldwin is apparently reluctant to marry again. Or at least to marry an American woman. He joked that he was considering getting a Filipino mail-order bride – and the result was a threatened beat-down from a Filipino senator.

Philippine Sen. Ramon Revilla said Monday that Baldwin’s comment was “insensitive and uncalled for” and an insult to millions of Filipinos. He called the actor “arrogant” and said he is apparently unaware that the Philippines has a law against mail-order brides.

“Let him try to come here in the Philippines and he’ll see mayhem,” Revilla said, using a local idiom that implies the speaker will personally administer a beating.

[From Yahoo! News]

Though Baldwin isn’t the type to be pushed around easily, he clearly realized he’d crossed a line. Or perhaps it was the threat of a beating – but he did apologize.

I’d like to offer an apology and a clarification to remarks I made recently.

While on the David Letterman program, I joked that I might need a “mail-order bride” to achieve the goal of having more children in my life. I believe that most people understood that this was a joke and took it as such. (A dated reference, no doubt, and another sign of my advancing age.) However, I do apologize to anyone who took offense. The comments of some Philippine government officials come as no surprise to me, either. Even the one by a former action film star-turned-Senator who beckoned me to come to the Philippines so he could “beat” me over my comment.

Such anger and frustration about the issue of sex trafficking is understandable. The Philippines has suffered significant problems with the issue of sex trafficking and I would like to turn your attention to the work of an organization called Love146 that my brother Stephen educated me about. Visit their website at www.love146.org and learn of the important work that is being done, in various regions of the world, by Rob Morris and his co-founders and staff.

[From the Huffington Post]

This was only one of several of Baldwin’s “holy crap why’d he say that” jokes. He also joked about his relationship with now 13-year-old daughter Ireland. Keep in mind this is the same girl he infamously chewed out via voicemail, calling her a vile little pig amongst other terrible things a parent should never, ever say. It was a huge PR debacle, so you’d think he’d stay away from ever talking about Ireland again – at least in anything other than absolutely glowing terms. But no.

‘My daughter is 13 and I see now why, in these films, whenever they represent a Mayan culture, or any tribal culture, or a Hawaiian culture, they always throw a teenage girl into the volcano as a sacrifice,’ he joked.

‘I kind of understand why. They [teenage girls] are very opinionated.’

‘Everyone always tells me “Oh it’s their hormones”, and I don’t really care,’ he told the chat show host.

‘They should be sent to some kind of Chinese re-education camp in the mountains for five years.’

[From the Daily Mail]

I’m starting to think Baldwin might want to completely stay away from mentioning other cultures, especially in relation to his jokes. The jokes themselves aren’t going over well, and associating them with other cultures simply seems to be widening the group of people he’s insulting. Instead of offending just mail-order brides, he offended Filipinos and Russians. Instead of offending just his daughter, he also offended Mayans, Hawaiians, and the Chinese. While I love the living daylights out of the guy – simply for how great he is on “30 Rock” – I really think Alec Baldwin should stick to scripted jokes. He’s smart and worldly, which had great comedic potential, but he lacks that self-censoring feature that lets most of us know when we’re about to cross the line.

Here’s Alec at the Spirit Awards on February 20th. Images thanks to Fame Pictures .