Aflac Duck’s Voice Fired For Japan Jokes On Twitter

By WebGuild at March 15, 2011 4 Comments Share

Aflac has sacked comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who was the voice of the Aflac duck, for making jokes on Twitter about the earthquake in Japan.

The Tweets have been deleted from Gottfried’s Twitter account, but they included the following one-liners:

“Japan called me. They said ‘maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here, they’re all sinking.’”
“I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said ‘is there a school in this area.’ She said ‘not now, but just wait.’”

These jokes could hurt Aflac’s business. The company is the top foreign insurance company in Japan and gets 75% of its revenue from that market.

Although the jokes were deleted, Gottfried followed them up with the statement, “I was born without a censor button. My mouth and now e-mail will continue to get me into trouble.”

I guess the joke now is on Gilbert Gottfried.

Channels: aflac, duck, gilbert gottfried, Twitter

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957504 Comments2011-03-15+08%3A08%3A06WebGuild »

Interesting spin on this. I heard about it everywhere, but I just had to click on this article because of the Aflac spin. I didn’t even realize they had so much business in Japan.

Comment by Theah — March 15, 2011 @ 8:09 AM
His last name Gottfried can be changed to Gottfired.

Comment by Sudeep Roy — March 15, 2011 @ 12:41 PM
Ha, Ha the joke really on him… wonder how much he gets pay from them.

Comment by jon smith — March 16, 2011 @ 8:00 PM
Got to agree – funny lines squeezed into 140 characters. Insensitive- but not worth firing a person.

Comment by @meerab1 — March 18, 2011 @ 12:52 PM