As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Gilbert Gottfried was fired from his job as the voice of the Aflac duck (which consisted solely of saying ‘Aflac’) this week after a series of “insensitive” tweets about the Japanese tsunami.
Perhaps for obvious reasons, I always take much greater offense to people telling comedians what they can and can’t joke about than I do to the content of any supposedly “offensive” joke.
Are “insensitive” words going to make more people die? Will they prevent anyone from donating to relief efforts? Does acting very somber and humbled actually help anyone? Or is it just a way to make the “somber” person feel like a caring humanitarian? I pose these questions as rhetoricals, because I’d hope the answers are obvious to any half-bright individual.
THAT’S HIS JOB, as a comedian, to find the humor in something before the rest of us do.
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And that is to say nothing of the EVEN MORE obvious fact that anyone who knows anything about Gilbert Gottfried knows that 85% of the man’s career is making insensitive jokes. Remember that movie, The Aristocrats? That entire idea for that movie started because Gilbert Gottfried told the joke at a Hugh Hefner Roast. The roast was taped shortly after 9/11, and Gilbert Gottfried told a 9/11 joke, at which point people yelled “too soon!” and then, as a way to keep from bombing hard and ruining the show, he went into his insanely dirty version of the old joke The Aristocrats and brought everyone back. Can you see what I’m getting at here?
THIS IS THE SAME GUY WHO SPAWNED ‘THE ARISTOCRATS’, WHICH ITSELF WAS SPAWNED BY HIM TELLING 9/11 JOKES RIGHT AFTER 9/11.
And he was the voice of the Aflac duck for a FULL DECADE after that.
It was for appearances. 75% of AFLAC's profits are tied to Japan. Let's not make this more than it is. It's economics, not propriety. Plain and simple.
