Henrick Vartanian
The ‘bright’ voices of our culture could not sit quietly as Japan faced a historically catastrophic natural disaster. Today, March 14, 2011, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, (pictured with the Aflac duck, last June) lost his voiceover job because of his recent tasteless tweets.
Poking fun of Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami via a series of tweets, Gottfried got the boot by Aflac insurance for which he dubbed the voice of that famous white duck; the Aflac mascot. The Georgia-based company does 75 percent of its business in Japan.
In one joke on Saturday, Gottfried posted: “I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, ‘They’ll be another one floating by any minute.’ ”
Then there was this: “Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”
Aflac’s spokesperson said the remarks were “lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac.”
Reported by WENN, other not-so-smart commentary about the heartbreaking disaster came from that “Family Guy” writer Alec Sulkin, who tweeted “If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, google ‘Pearl Harbor death toll.’ ” However, we give him an incredibly tiny break since he soon apologizing and deleting the tweet.
By putting his 2 cents in, that half-dollar rapper, aka 50 cent, dropped in our estimation to less than 48 pennies after he tweeted “This is very serious, people. I had to evacuate all my hoe’s from LA, Hawaii and Japan. I had to do it. Lol.”
The rapper too tried to save face later by tweeting: “Some of my tweets are ignorant I do it for shock value. Hate it or love it. I’m cool either way 50 cent.”
Carol Burnett said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” But Tweeting tasteless jokes as people were dying shows how awful these guys are at timing; especially considering the two (Gottfried and Sulkin) who earn a living through comedy.
Not to scold them while they realize their mistakes, but we are nothing if we don’t learn from our mistakes. Maybe next time these 3 rebels will have their morning coffee (or switch to decaf) before they type their brain-farts and hit send.
TO HELP IN JAPAN RELIEF EFFORTS CLICK HERE
Gilbert Gottfried on Twitter: http://twitter.com/realgilbert
Alec Sulkin on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thesulk
50 cent official site: http://www.50cent.com/