Aflac - Surely they must have known

In case you have missed it, Gilbert Gottfried was fired as the recognizable (?) voice of the Aflac Duck for doing something outrageous.  Who would have thought this possible!?  While I find his Japanese disaster "jokes" in extremely poor form, I seem to remember this being the case for most of his other "jokes."

The real question in mind is not the jokes but Aflac and its possible naivete', if that is the case.  What were they thinking? Even as the voice of a duck, they must have realized that they were just "asking for it."  The time bomb was softly ticking, tick, tick, tick, tick.  Is this really how an insurance company minimizes its risk and exposure?

Can you imagine how much Gottfried was paid for his voice?  For those who recognized his voice as the duck, what possible positive spin or slant did his persona add to the Aflac product line?  Adding to the above doubts, is this really good use of the company's resources or good "product identification?"  Or, is it simply wasted money collected from Aflac clients?  Certainly there are any number of individuals who could yell "AFLAC" and I understand that Aflac is having auditions.  Click here to apply.

In response to the turmoil, Gottfried apologized.  He also created a video with some possible jokes based upon historic disasters to essentially ask and answer(?) the question, "How soon can you joke about certain things?"  It is a valid question.  View the short video (at your own peril as the first segment is crude) and see you what you think.  How bad, as measured in various ways, must things be before one can never make a joke about them?  Cases in point - could it ever be possible to make a joke about the Cambodian genocide of the 1960-1970s or the WWII's holocaust?  To view Gottfried's "History's Forgotten Disaster Jokes." click here.  Are some actually OK?


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