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With blue comedy its all about what the underlying target is. With good stuff its actually the racism or taselessness you're laughing at not the subject of the joke.
His joke was absolutely 100% "laugh at Puerto Rico" not "laugh at how dumb and over the top these racist comments are"
Yep. Be careful you don't cut yourself in the audience, liberal snowflakes, I'm so edgy. What's next, maybe a joke about how black people are dumb? Chinese restaurants serve cat? Michelle Obama is actually a gorilla? Watch out, I'm so edgy!
Urgh, Colbert was better about it in that they clearly knew they needed to be careful, but no one should really have touched the campaign for women to vote separate to their husbands. The Daily Show (with Ronny) was...terrible on this.
Like people: it's about domestic abuse. We're discussing domestic abuse. No one needs to try and do a funny take on this.
Of all of the mainline late night folks Colbert might be literally the only one I trust to handle this properly.
Colbert and maybe Seth Meyers.
None of the others should dare fly close to this sun.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I feel like it was much more of a "Aflac getting mad that Gilbert Gottfried said things Gilbert Gottfried constantly says in his standup" situation. Gilbert was a very known quantity. An insurance company using his voice as their star commercial character then having to drop him because he did some tasteless blue comedy... the question isn't defending Gilbert one way or the other, it is more of a "What were you fucking expecting, Aflac!" situation.
This feels the same on its face. Offensive, racially charged blue comedian is offensive. He has venues in which that stuff works. The number of those venues are shrinking every year, but roasts definitely seems like one where sure, he can do what he does.
The Trump campaign hiring him to be warmup for their nazi rally, then saying "we had no idea" is just the hottest of bullshit though. They knew, or rather, they were so incompetent at their job that they should have known. Or both can be true, seems likely.
Gottfried didn't get dropped for "tasteless blue comedy" - he got dropped for mocking the dead in a country where a) AFLAC has a significant presence and b) has significant cultural taboos regarding the dead. And I find this argument that comedians somehow should be immune to the repercussions of their speech to be antithetical to free speech (it's basically a variant of the preferred first speaker fallacy.)
I feel like it was much more of a "Aflac getting mad that Gilbert Gottfried said things Gilbert Gottfried constantly says in his standup" situation. Gilbert was a very known quantity. An insurance company using his voice as their star commercial character then having to drop him because he did some tasteless blue comedy... the question isn't defending Gilbert one way or the other, it is more of a "What were you fucking expecting, Aflac!" situation.
This feels the same on its face. Offensive, racially charged blue comedian is offensive. He has venues in which that stuff works. The number of those venues are shrinking every year, but roasts definitely seems like one where sure, he can do what he does.
The Trump campaign hiring him to be warmup for their nazi rally, then saying "we had no idea" is just the hottest of bullshit though. They knew, or rather, they were so incompetent at their job that they should have known. Or both can be true, seems likely.
Gottfried didn't get dropped for "tasteless blue comedy" - he got dropped for mocking the dead in a country where a) AFLAC has a significant presence and b) has significant cultural taboos regarding the dead. And I find this argument that comedians somehow should be immune to the repercussions of their speech to be antithetical to free speech (it's basically a variant of the preferred first speaker fallacy.)
You aren't wrong. They absolutely should.
But there should also be some due fucking diligence by the people making the hiring choices.
While "Johnny the Arsonist" should be fired for setting fires to my business, it's kinda my responsibility for hiring "Johnny the Arsonist".
This isn't a "We didn't know Michael Richards was gonna scream racial profanities in the middle of a set", or pretend that noone knew about Louis CK.
This was Gilbert frikkin Gottfried. For as long as I've heard of him, him being the "face" of any brand just seems like folly.
Sorry, but no - especially given that (as interviews with the late comic had shown) that "Gilbert Gottfried" as seen on stage was very much a character created by the actual Gottfried. (This is actually pretty common, especially with comics who have particularly intense stage personas.) It is not unreasonable at all to think that a professional who deals with the public might have some idea about decorum.
I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this yet. I still have last week's episode (also on Trump), a week's worth of Late Night monologues, and three podcasts on the subject in my queue as well.
+11
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
I feel like it was much more of a "Aflac getting mad that Gilbert Gottfried said things Gilbert Gottfried constantly says in his standup" situation. Gilbert was a very known quantity. An insurance company using his voice as their star commercial character then having to drop him because he did some tasteless blue comedy... the question isn't defending Gilbert one way or the other, it is more of a "What were you fucking expecting, Aflac!" situation.
This feels the same on its face. Offensive, racially charged blue comedian is offensive. He has venues in which that stuff works. The number of those venues are shrinking every year, but roasts definitely seems like one where sure, he can do what he does.
The Trump campaign hiring him to be warmup for their nazi rally, then saying "we had no idea" is just the hottest of bullshit though. They knew, or rather, they were so incompetent at their job that they should have known. Or both can be true, seems likely.
Gottfried didn't get dropped for "tasteless blue comedy" - he got dropped for mocking the dead in a country where a) AFLAC has a significant presence and b) has significant cultural taboos regarding the dead. And I find this argument that comedians somehow should be immune to the repercussions of their speech to be antithetical to free speech (it's basically a variant of the preferred first speaker fallacy.)
I think you are missing my point here or misreading it.
That mocking the dead thing? That is not out of bounds for what Gottfried did in his standup. The dude had zero filter. I am not saying he should be immune to repercussions at all, I am saying AFLAC hired him, so either they did no research whatsoever before making him the funny duck voice, or they knew and didn't care until he said something that offended them. Ala Issac Hayes being totally fine with years of making fun of ethnicities, religions, etc. until they made of his cult.
My stance is that if that was AFLAC's moral stance, they never should have hired the guy in the first place. He was eventually going to say something that looks bad on them.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this yet. I still have last week's episode (also on Trump), a week's worth of Late Night monologues, and three podcasts on the subject in my queue as well.
I haven't watched Oliver in 3 weeks. It'll be interesting to see when or if I go back. It's not even Trump specific, but given everything, I'm not really in the mood for "let's look at what else is crappy right now" style of show.
I feel like it was much more of a "Aflac getting mad that Gilbert Gottfried said things Gilbert Gottfried constantly says in his standup" situation. Gilbert was a very known quantity. An insurance company using his voice as their star commercial character then having to drop him because he did some tasteless blue comedy... the question isn't defending Gilbert one way or the other, it is more of a "What were you fucking expecting, Aflac!" situation.
This feels the same on its face. Offensive, racially charged blue comedian is offensive. He has venues in which that stuff works. The number of those venues are shrinking every year, but roasts definitely seems like one where sure, he can do what he does.
The Trump campaign hiring him to be warmup for their nazi rally, then saying "we had no idea" is just the hottest of bullshit though. They knew, or rather, they were so incompetent at their job that they should have known. Or both can be true, seems likely.
Gottfried didn't get dropped for "tasteless blue comedy" - he got dropped for mocking the dead in a country where a) AFLAC has a significant presence and b) has significant cultural taboos regarding the dead. And I find this argument that comedians somehow should be immune to the repercussions of their speech to be antithetical to free speech (it's basically a variant of the preferred first speaker fallacy.)
I think you are missing my point here or misreading it.
That mocking the dead thing? That is not out of bounds for what Gottfried did in his standup. The dude had zero filter. I am not saying he should be immune to repercussions at all, I am saying AFLAC hired him, so either they did no research whatsoever before making him the funny duck voice, or they knew and didn't care until he said something that offended them. Ala Issac Hayes being totally fine with years of making fun of ethnicities, religions, etc. until they made of his cult.
My stance is that if that was AFLAC's moral stance, they never should have hired the guy in the first place. He was eventually going to say something that looks bad on them.
I'm not misreading or misunderstanding - I'm pointing out that your position is excusing Gottfried's behavior (and in a more general sense the behavior of comics in general) by arguing that AFLAC should have "known better", and as such their decision to fire him for mocking the dead is somehow "wrong". This argument is based on a warped reading of free speech and freedom of association, that by signing on AFLAC "knew what they were getting into" and so should have accepted that their spokesman made disparaging comments that wound up causing them actual problems in a major market for the company.
As you may note, I find this to be a ridiculous argument, especially in light of the fact that the stage persona of "Gilbert Gottfried" was exactly that - a construct by the actual Gottfried (and something that most comedians do) - and thus the argument that he had "zero filter" doesn't actually hold up. And even if that was the case, his lack of filter was on his head, and thus the repercussions fall to him.
These conversations always seem to try to immediately shift from the specific thing being critiqued to the broader philosophical argument about the extent to which comedy should inherently be above reproach due to its nature. This was one of the jokes that Gottfried made immediately following the Tohoku tsunami:
Same with the "hur hur, Puerto Rico is actually just garbage" joke. It's just a shitty thing to say, with no humour in it, and whose only real effect is 'shock' value. Which... cool
I enjoyed some of his work, but wouldn't call myself a 'fan', so let's do a bit of a deep dive on Wikipedia.
He was born in 1955, and apparently started doing comedy at the age of 15, so 1970. He got picked up on SNL at the age of 25, so 1980.
He was the voice of the Aflac duck from 2000 to 2011.
The Controversies section of his Wikipedia page includes:
- Gottfried telling masturbation jokes (referencing Paul Reubens) during the 43 Primetime Emmy Awards. In 1991 that got him blacklisted (clearly being 'cancelled' didn't really take back then either) and while broadcast live on the East Coast, was censored for the West.
- Telling a 9/11 joke 3 weeks after 9/11 at the roast of Hugh Hefner, at which point the audience apparently turned on him, leading him to abandon prepared remarks and launch into The Aristocrats bit that was later included in the 2005 film of the same name.
- He was finally removed as the voice in 2011 after tweeting a dozen jokes about the earthquake disaster in Japan. Apparently (at least at the time) Aflac did ~3/4 of its business in Japan. So that's not great.
They hired him knowing he had pushed boundaries. It'd be no different than hiring Bob Saget and then later going full ShockedPikachu.jpg.
Comedy is not an innate everything proof shield against critique, but it's not like his body of work was hard to come by, even in the burgeoning days of the internet. I remember watching some of his stand up on TV in the 90's. It wasn't exactly family friendly at the time. Though Saget's work definitely got bigger laughs with the juxtaposition against what else I knew him from, my sister watching Full House, and America's Funniest Home Videos (so two awful shows).
Businesses should know who their spokespeople are. Expecting them to do the most modest modicum of due diligence is a basic best practice.
Realistically, I'd be shocked if they weren't aware of his style of material. They just didn't care/think it was a big deal until it impacted them directly.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Again, "not family friendly" feels like erasing what was actually said through euphemism. It would appear that Aflac had a pretty broad willingness to be okay with "not family friendly" jokes, but, again, where is the humour in that tweet? Calling it a controversial joke feels like a pretty heavy lift in order to make it Aflac's fault for expecting some infinitesimal modicum of not being a raging asshole while a community is actively counting their dead, rather than on Gottfried for what he actually did
+1
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
I am not defending his work, good lord.
I am stating that Aflac was wrong for hiring the guy if they didn't want a guy like him on the commercials. They really SHOULD have known better, because the kind of material he did, as linked by Forar above, wasn't really a secret.
Am I somehow not writing this clearly?
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Honestly hiring Bob Sagat at around that time would maybe let you get away with playing the ignorance card. The man never once hid who he was, but he was still riding (or rather being rid on) that wave from Full House and AFHV. I can more believe some dumb suit picking him and then later going "Woah!".
Then agian maybe the Alfac people only watched Aladdin and Problem Child and thought "Yeah this guy".
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I am stating that Aflac was wrong for hiring the guy if they didn't want a guy like him on the commercials. They really SHOULD have known better, because the kind of material he did, as linked by Forar above, wasn't really a secret.
Am I somehow not writing this clearly?
They did know what a guy like him did for material. And were okay with it. What he tweeted was shitty even for him. That's where the problem lies.
*edit*
I guess it's Aflac's fault for thinking a professional comedian would be good at comedy.
I am stating that Aflac was wrong for hiring the guy if they didn't want a guy like him on the commercials. They really SHOULD have known better, because the kind of material he did, as linked by Forar above, wasn't really a secret.
Am I somehow not writing this clearly?
And people are pointing out that you can claim that you are not defending his work all you like - but the position of arguing that AFLAC was somehow wrong for firing Gottfried because they "should have known better" is, in fact, a defense of his behavior.
People aren't misunderstanding you, they're disagreeing with you.
Honestly hiring Bob Sagat at around that time would maybe let you get away with playing the ignorance card. The man never once hid who he was, but he was still riding (or rather being rid on) that wave from Full House and AFHV. I can more believe some dumb suit picking him and then later going "Woah!".
Then agian maybe the Alfac people only watched Aladdin and Problem Child and thought "Yeah this guy".
Eh - it's worth remembering that green vegetable era Nickelodeon had no problem working with Saget and his coterie of comics back in the day. He was originally approached to head Out of Control (and was the one who recommended his friend and fellow comic Dave Coulier for the role.)
I am stating that Aflac was wrong for hiring the guy if they didn't want a guy like him on the commercials. They really SHOULD have known better, because the kind of material he did, as linked by Forar above, wasn't really a secret.
Am I somehow not writing this clearly?
And people are pointing out that you can claim that you are not defending his work all you like - but the position of arguing that AFLAC was somehow wrong for firing Gottfried because they "should have known better" is, in fact, a defense of his behavior.
People aren't misunderstanding you, they're disagreeing with you.
Gottfried being a raging dipshit and AFLAC being dumbasses for hiring him in the first place are not mutually exclusive ideas.
I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this yet. I still have last week's episode (also on Trump), a week's worth of Late Night monologues, and three podcasts on the subject in my queue as well.
I haven't watched Oliver in 3 weeks. It'll be interesting to see when or if I go back. It's not even Trump specific, but given everything, I'm not really in the mood for "let's look at what else is crappy right now" style of show.
Not telling you to watch when you feel you can't, of course, but FWIW: Oliver a. Specifically calls out the fact that not everyone has the emotional bandwidth right now, and that is okay (and kudos for him explicitly calling that out) and b. His style right now is less "here are even more things that are shitty" and more "here is exactly how they are shitty, and what we can do about it," which I find therapeutic and helpful (but of course to each their own).
"Let's take a look at the scores! The girls are at the square root of Pi, while the boys are still at a crudely drawn picture of a duck. Clearly, it's anybody's game!"
+2
TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
For what it's worth Gottfried was always mentioned as one of the actual nicest guys in the business even if his humor absolutely was not for everyone. All of his controversies are about making a joke 'too soon' after something bad happened.
I know some folks don't care for him so much on TDS anymore, but Jon Stewarts podcast tends to be a lot better, and this one largely agrees with my read on what happened with the election and the real problem with the Dems as of the early 21st century:
Posts
Yep. Be careful you don't cut yourself in the audience, liberal snowflakes, I'm so edgy. What's next, maybe a joke about how black people are dumb? Chinese restaurants serve cat? Michelle Obama is actually a gorilla? Watch out, I'm so edgy!
Of all of the mainline late night folks Colbert might be literally the only one I trust to handle this properly.
Colbert and maybe Seth Meyers.
None of the others should dare fly close to this sun.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Watch the last few minutes at least. Doesn't stop for air while rattling the list of things off, it was crazy.
Gottfried didn't get dropped for "tasteless blue comedy" - he got dropped for mocking the dead in a country where a) AFLAC has a significant presence and b) has significant cultural taboos regarding the dead. And I find this argument that comedians somehow should be immune to the repercussions of their speech to be antithetical to free speech (it's basically a variant of the preferred first speaker fallacy.)
Daily Show will be live from 11-12, with Jon hosting.
Sucks that Paramount Plus let's me watch live from CBS, but not from CC.
Sorry, but no - especially given that (as interviews with the late comic had shown) that "Gilbert Gottfried" as seen on stage was very much a character created by the actual Gottfried. (This is actually pretty common, especially with comics who have particularly intense stage personas.) It is not unreasonable at all to think that a professional who deals with the public might have some idea about decorum.
I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this yet. I still have last week's episode (also on Trump), a week's worth of Late Night monologues, and three podcasts on the subject in my queue as well.
I think you are missing my point here or misreading it.
That mocking the dead thing? That is not out of bounds for what Gottfried did in his standup. The dude had zero filter. I am not saying he should be immune to repercussions at all, I am saying AFLAC hired him, so either they did no research whatsoever before making him the funny duck voice, or they knew and didn't care until he said something that offended them. Ala Issac Hayes being totally fine with years of making fun of ethnicities, religions, etc. until they made of his cult.
My stance is that if that was AFLAC's moral stance, they never should have hired the guy in the first place. He was eventually going to say something that looks bad on them.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I haven't watched Oliver in 3 weeks. It'll be interesting to see when or if I go back. It's not even Trump specific, but given everything, I'm not really in the mood for "let's look at what else is crappy right now" style of show.
I'm not misreading or misunderstanding - I'm pointing out that your position is excusing Gottfried's behavior (and in a more general sense the behavior of comics in general) by arguing that AFLAC should have "known better", and as such their decision to fire him for mocking the dead is somehow "wrong". This argument is based on a warped reading of free speech and freedom of association, that by signing on AFLAC "knew what they were getting into" and so should have accepted that their spokesman made disparaging comments that wound up causing them actual problems in a major market for the company.
As you may note, I find this to be a ridiculous argument, especially in light of the fact that the stage persona of "Gilbert Gottfried" was exactly that - a construct by the actual Gottfried (and something that most comedians do) - and thus the argument that he had "zero filter" doesn't actually hold up. And even if that was the case, his lack of filter was on his head, and thus the repercussions fall to him.
Same with the "hur hur, Puerto Rico is actually just garbage" joke. It's just a shitty thing to say, with no humour in it, and whose only real effect is 'shock' value. Which... cool
He was born in 1955, and apparently started doing comedy at the age of 15, so 1970. He got picked up on SNL at the age of 25, so 1980.
He was the voice of the Aflac duck from 2000 to 2011.
The Controversies section of his Wikipedia page includes:
- Gottfried telling masturbation jokes (referencing Paul Reubens) during the 43 Primetime Emmy Awards. In 1991 that got him blacklisted (clearly being 'cancelled' didn't really take back then either) and while broadcast live on the East Coast, was censored for the West.
- Telling a 9/11 joke 3 weeks after 9/11 at the roast of Hugh Hefner, at which point the audience apparently turned on him, leading him to abandon prepared remarks and launch into The Aristocrats bit that was later included in the 2005 film of the same name.
- He was finally removed as the voice in 2011 after tweeting a dozen jokes about the earthquake disaster in Japan. Apparently (at least at the time) Aflac did ~3/4 of its business in Japan. So that's not great.
They hired him knowing he had pushed boundaries. It'd be no different than hiring Bob Saget and then later going full ShockedPikachu.jpg.
Comedy is not an innate everything proof shield against critique, but it's not like his body of work was hard to come by, even in the burgeoning days of the internet. I remember watching some of his stand up on TV in the 90's. It wasn't exactly family friendly at the time. Though Saget's work definitely got bigger laughs with the juxtaposition against what else I knew him from, my sister watching Full House, and America's Funniest Home Videos (so two awful shows).
Businesses should know who their spokespeople are. Expecting them to do the most modest modicum of due diligence is a basic best practice.
Realistically, I'd be shocked if they weren't aware of his style of material. They just didn't care/think it was a big deal until it impacted them directly.
I am stating that Aflac was wrong for hiring the guy if they didn't want a guy like him on the commercials. They really SHOULD have known better, because the kind of material he did, as linked by Forar above, wasn't really a secret.
Am I somehow not writing this clearly?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Then agian maybe the Alfac people only watched Aladdin and Problem Child and thought "Yeah this guy".
They did know what a guy like him did for material. And were okay with it. What he tweeted was shitty even for him. That's where the problem lies.
*edit*
I guess it's Aflac's fault for thinking a professional comedian would be good at comedy.
And people are pointing out that you can claim that you are not defending his work all you like - but the position of arguing that AFLAC was somehow wrong for firing Gottfried because they "should have known better" is, in fact, a defense of his behavior.
People aren't misunderstanding you, they're disagreeing with you.
Eh - it's worth remembering that green vegetable era Nickelodeon had no problem working with Saget and his coterie of comics back in the day. He was originally approached to head Out of Control (and was the one who recommended his friend and fellow comic Dave Coulier for the role.)
Gottfried being a raging dipshit and AFLAC being dumbasses for hiring him in the first place are not mutually exclusive ideas.
Not telling you to watch when you feel you can't, of course, but FWIW: Oliver a. Specifically calls out the fact that not everyone has the emotional bandwidth right now, and that is okay (and kudos for him explicitly calling that out) and b. His style right now is less "here are even more things that are shitty" and more "here is exactly how they are shitty, and what we can do about it," which I find therapeutic and helpful (but of course to each their own).