Who is Gilbert Gottfried? He is perhaps best known for two of his avian rolls – one as Iago (the garrulous parrot in Aladdin) and the other as the Alfac duck. For those who don’t know this latter mascot, simply imagine a big white duck endowed with Gottfried’s nasally voice spouting the word, Aflac. Good, you’re caught up.
Gottfried, in all his years of lending language to bird-brained fowl, has made his first fatal misstep. All it took was one Tweet. What could bring such a well-known comedian so quickly under hot water? A joke – a joke about Japan, that is.
Forgive me for reprinting just one: “Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.” This quote (promptly removed after some understandably distressed retaliation) is one of the least offensive. Unfortunately for Gottfried, the internet has a strong memory, so the quotes (there are a dozen or so) can be found. But, don’t bother looking, they’re not particularly funny, most of them incorporate sex – which would be fine… if they were funny.
Now, fired from Aflac, Gottfried’s Tweets are the source of considerable controversy. Many argue the obvious reaction – what the hell is this guy doing?
The death tolls from the magnitude nine earthquake of March 11th are stretching towards 10,000; the number of missing is somewhere under (though not far under) 13,000. The volatile, radioactive conditions around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to USA Today, “have approached levels after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.” How accurate or inaccurate this assessment is will be seen in the coming days, weeks, years and decades. In any case, the fact that the comparison has been made by reputable scientists and repeated by a reputable news source is, at the very least, disturbing.
And the Aflac guy is making jokes about his sex life with Japanese women in a post apocalyptic Japan. That’s more than a bit indelicate and offensive.
Yet, there is the other side, the pro-Gottfried’s – you could say, the pro-free-speech guys. Their position is not unjustified and, to summarize, they are saying this: he is a comedian! It is his job to make jokes. He is paid for it.
Furthermore, they are saying (on various blogs, websites and other internet medium,) that the only way for some to cope with a disaster of this level, of this global impact, is to joke about it. Try and find something to laugh at amid the screams.
What does this all mean for us? Well, having fired Gottfried, there’s a national quest for a new Aflac voice with a tighter muzzle on his beak, and a better sense of comedic timing.