Comic/actor Gilbert Gottfried is using his famously grating voice to speak out against left-wing cancel culture.
“The internet makes me feel sentimental about old-time lynch mobs,” Gottfried said on “Cancelled,” a new Fox Nation series. “At least lynch mobs, they had to put their shoes on, go out, get their hands dirty, and deal with other people. Now you sit in your underwear on your couch, there with your phone, and you have a lynching there.”
Gottfried’s career included comic-relief roles in some of Hollywood’s biggest films, including “Beverly Hills Cop II.” He was also the voice of voice of Iago in Disney’s beloved “Aladdin” films and TV series, and was the longtime voice of the Aflac duck.
But he got an up-close look at cancel culture in 2011 when he was among the earliest victims of the Twitter mob.
As the twin disasters of an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, Gottfried tweeted some jokes.
“Japan is really advanced,” he tweeted. “They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”
In another, he tweeted: “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.’”
The jokes may led to an enraged reaction on social media, with Twitter users demanding repercussions.
Aflac fired him, and his work quickly dried up – but he didn’t change his act or cave to the PC crowd despite the incident.
“I always think about what George Carlin once said, which is that a comedian’s job is to find where the line is drawn and then you’re supposed to step over that line,” Gottfried told USA Today a few years ago.
Gottfried was also a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2015, where he briefly worked alongside Donald Trump just as he transformed from a TV star into a political sensation.
The comedian thinks cancel culture had plenty to do with Trump’s appeal.
“I think part of the reason that he is so popular is that everyone is so tired of having to watch what they say,” he told USA Today. “He doesn’t care at all about what he says.”
Gottfried may be getting the last laugh on his critics.
He’s currently hosting a wildly successful podcast, and prior to the pandemic was back in demand as a live performer. He’s also become one of the biggest stars on Cameo, a website where fans pay cash to get a video message from a celebrity.
Gottfried charges $175 a pop for what amounts to a minute or so of ad-libbed recorded messages.
“I always have this dream that my parents could come back for one day, and my father — who owned a Coney Island hardware store, working with his hands for barely any customers — would ask me what I’m up to,” Gottfried told the Marker website. “I’d say, ‘Well, I worked about 30 minutes today, talking into a phone, made $4,500, and now I’m exhausted and need to take a nap.’”
GQ said last year that Gottfried was the number three earner on the website – and while the site doesn’t disclose income, the comic has 2,586 reviews, which would add up to nearly $400,000 at the $150 rate he had been charging until recently.
That means there’s still a big market for unfiltered humor, even on taboo topics.
And Gottfried knows why.
“Bad taste jokes have their own apology built into them because you laugh and cringe at the same time,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2019. “People need jokes like that to touch the sore area.”
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.