I disagree entirely. It most certainly is proper to be a jerk to people who are a) profoundly ignorant b) racist c) demagogues and d) proud of it.
Does the Grand Dragon Pantywaist Wizard of the KKK deserve my respect and civility? No.
Should I be kind and gentle to Fred “Cocksucker” Phelps? No.
These fucking teabag people embarrass the shit out of everyone who isn’t a complete fuckwit. They don’t deserve my politesse, and given that “Freedom Watch” (btw, note how these conservative organizations name themselves like totalitarian states, ie: The People’s Free and Prosperous Democratic Republican Union of New Rapeistan) gave out the guy’s cell phone number and encouraged people to call him, they really can’t take the moral high road. Oh, and the other reason they can’t take the moral high road is because they are imbecilic racist rednecks.
It sounds to me like OP is the sort of dickbrain that feels the need to act as an apologist for the zealotous fundie far right wing churls. So here’s one for the OP:
Shut your fucking mouth. No one past the third grade falls for that “Johnny started it!!!” bullshit. Screw these ignorant yokels, and screw the horse you rode in on if you’re one of them, and if you’re not beaten over the fence by the teabagger mouthbreathers. These people deserve nothing but scorn and disrespect, and my only regret in regards to his phone call is that these violent xenohomonegrophobic drooling slackjawed mongoloids are getting more free press for their insane babble.
ETA: And shame on Geico for not canceling the insurance of every teabagger. I guess it’s a free country, even when our Freedom isn’t being Watched. For Jesus.
EETA: And BTW, that was about the shittest “pitting” I’ve seen for a while. Gratz on your accomplishment.
ivn1188, I’d agree with you if we were talking about a situation where an idiot brings a discussion to me. But to call up said idiot on the phone just for the chance to spew rhetorical questions at them you know they have no answer to, well, that’s just being a jerk. IMHO, of course.
Of course he does. Because the incidents are exactly the same.
Sure, Geico was within its rights to fire the guy. But the lame thing about the OP is the false equivalence being implied. But then, that’s par for the course for conservatives nowadays.
Let’s see. Geico fired their voice actor for making what he thought was a private a telephone call excoriating tea baggers and deprecating the mentally retarded. If he were an employee, this would be illegal in my state because an employer cannot discipline an employee for his/her political positions. But he is not a private employee, he is an actor (I presume) hired as an independent contractor. He is the spokesman for a major company, and the people at tea bag central decided that his off the record opinion should go on the record and get him punished. Geico doesn’t want or need the bad publicity and decides to move on to a new spokesman. I can’t say that I blame them. It’s my understanding that Geico is owned by Warren Buffet’s investment company, Buffet is a Democrat. Geico isn’t doing politics, they are doing business.
Should the tea baggers have made this public and got somebody fired for disagreeing with them? No. That is a really asshole thing to do, mess with someone’s livelihood over a political disagreement, especially since the actor is not a politician.
Conclusion: tea baggers are still raging assholes, Geico is just trying to sell insurance. Actor is not too swift.
Trivia: The Geico gecko was intended to be voiced by Kelsey Grammer, who agreed to do it and recorded the first one, but the SAG strike prevented him from doing more so they hired English actor Jake Wood, who not being a SAG member could do the job. Baxter is the third person to do the voice.
I wonder if they’ll scrap the campaign or go back to one of the previous voices.
Everybody who calls me on the telephone and leaves their name and number can count on it being off the record. I will not go to the press or try to get them fired if they offend me. If they threaten me, that is another matter, one which I will take to the police, but not to the press or their employer. Remember, you are as dangerous as a damn monkey with a gun!
Pshah. His firing due to his personally offending the Tea Party simply demonstrates that Geico does not wish to commercially offend their target market - idiots.
Seriously, though…had he been a Tea Party person and called up a liberal organization (ACORN, for example) and said something that stupid, you folks would be howling like broke-dick dogs over it. But because it was a liberal calling a Tea Party organization, your overall attitude is meh.
And people try to claim that this board does not tilt to the left…
ACORN should have had such tragic problems as an unknown commercial voice actor calling them to bitch them out. They had an entire news organization dedicated to promoting a highly edited tape and extrapolating that tape into “ACORN should be destroyed”. Which argument succeeded too.
Who has tried to claim that this board does not tilt to the left? Of course it does, since it is dedicated to eradicating ignorance (I kid, I kid!)
Seriously, since the majority of the world is to the far to the left (compared to the United States), the mere presence of a number of posters from Europe, Canada, Australia and NZ will tend to significantly tilt the board to the (relative) left.
Well, yeah, it’s hard to get outraged when you agree with the basic sentiment. But contacting a political organization to tell them that they suck? Seriously, who cares? It’s a petty asshole maneuver, but even if he were doing it to a organization I liked, I can’t see getting that torqued up about it.
Of course, if he’d attempted to libel the organization by going public with a highly edited tape of his interaction with them, that falsely presented them as engaging or abetting criminal activity, that’d be a different story. But that’s not what happened here.
By the way, has anyone ever told you that you really suck at making equivalences?
Besides which, I honestly am not insecure enough in my own poltical views that I demand those on television share them. I especially don’t give a damn what a 7th tier celebrity like Lance Baxter (who I couldn’t pick out of a lineup unless the others were all dressed as Disney characters and or Dykes on Bikes) said or did whether I agree with it or not. I’m not going to boycott a company that saves me money because of their spokesperson (though I should mention I don’t use GEICO anyway- they’ve never given me a cheaper quote than other companies and I’ve a spotless driving record for the last 6 years).
NOW, if the Geico gecko on the air as part of the commercial said “Under Obama care you’re better off being eaten by me and my family than going to an ER”, then I might feel differently. Otherwise I couldn’t care less if Mr. Whipple was a crack addict off camera or Willard Scott was questioned in the death of Natalie Holloway or the dog from the Alpo commercial mauled a Girl Scout; it doesn’t affect how I feel about their products.
And it could have been worse: it could have been one of the GEICO cavemen who called them retarded.
Whatever Geico’s executive leadership’s opinions on the whole Tea Party movement, they’re a business with far too wide a client base to be seen as having any association with pretty much anyone who is making waves. It’s one thing if you’re a boutique business whose clientele is all more or less of the same political persuasion, but for a national insurer you pretty much don’t want to be seen as being overtly/publicly condemnatory or supportive of anything remotely controversial.
