One tweet said, “I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, ‘They’ll be another one floating by any minute now.’"
Not sure I agree with this. Granted, his joke was in bad taste, but I remember MANY jokes about American tragedies that came along right away, including Waco (“How do you pick up women in Waco? With a Dustbuster.”) and the Challenger explosion (“How do they know Christa McAulliff had dandruff? They found her head and shoulders on the beach.”).
But, while it was in bad taste, Gottfried’s joke was fucking funny.
The article I mentioned reports that there were " a series of insensitive jokes following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan." The one I mentioned was the only one mentioned specifically in the article.
But, still. I think this is a HUGE over-reaction. After all, Gilbert’s one of the dirtiest comics around, and has been for years. It’s not like they couldn’t have looked at his track record before hiring him. If they went as far back as Iago in Aladdin, it’s no one’s fault but their own.
I think Gilbert Gottfried is hilarious. And I’m sure he won’t be exactly crying over the fact that he won’t voice the Aflac duck anymore, but is this really the new precedent for firing people? “We thought one of your tweets was in bad taste, and we also didn’t think it was very funny.” Curious.
Gottfried has been saying stuff way more offensive than this for his whole career. It’s his thing. If AFLAC wasn’t aware of that, well, they’re imbeciles.
:rolleyes: Whatever you say. He can be funny (especially his blue stuff), but this ain’t it, IMHO.
Plus, AFLAC is an insurance company, so having their spokesman make light of an incident of catastrophic proportions probably hit a little too close to home for TPTB.
Eh, I don’t have any problem if Gottfried wants to make offensive jokes about tragedies, but if he were my spokesman, I’d fire him to.
The point of a spokesman is to attract positive attention to the company. If he’s pissing people off, then there isn’t really any point to keeping him on.
After all, its not like he’s the only guy capable of making a funny duck voice.
Calling Gottfried a “spokesman” for the company seems a bit of a stretch. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t his entire role as a spokesman limited to saying one word repeatedly in commercials that never so much as showed his face? Gottfried does not seem to be nearly as intimately associated with Aflac as, say, Bill Cosby was for Jell-O pudding. Or even Sally Struthers for the DeVry institute.
Man, he is just as raw at those Comedy Central roasts as any of the other comedians. IIRC, he claims to have seen bats emerging from Joan Rivers ‘lady parts’ at sunset (and other stuff far to foul to post here)
“I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent,” went one of Gottfried’s dozen cyber cracks that began Saturday. “I said, ‘Is there a school is this area?’ She said, ‘Not now, but just wait.’ ”
And this: “Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”