Twitter and TMZ and Gilbert Gottfried

Gilbert Gottfried is the latest person to get in trouble over his posts on Twitter. Unlike Cappy Pondexter, who said that God sent this earthquake and tsunami to Japan to punish them for being so mean to their own people (so God punishes Japan by killing 10,000 innocent people to punish Japanese rulers for being so mean to its people...there's some kind of religious disconnect there)...

Gottfried just made jokes about them. Jokes about a situation in which probably the whole damn country is terrified they're going to get radiation poisoning, in which 300,000 people are homeless, in which misery and despair are commonplace... and he's making jokes about it?

This isn't some country like Greece where the welfare state is trying to keep from going bankrupt, and students are rioting. Plenty of fodder for jokes there...but to make fun of a situation in which 10,000 people are dead, more doomed to die of cancer, I have no doubt, and 300,000 people homeless, through no fault of their own...and he finds something in this situation to be amusing?

I only saw 2 of the 10 or so tweets he apparently made (they've been removed from his Twitter Account but the garbage..er gossip site TMZ shared a few of them) and he's not making fun of the deaths, but rather of the flooding... I paraphrase: "Lost your girlfriend. Wait a few minutes, another one will float by."

You have to wonder...even if he thought this stuff was funny, did he really think that all the Americans of Japanese descent in this country (I refuse to use hyphenated words!) would not read his crap and be offended? Did he really think that the average American, who sees that devastation and reads the news of the deaths and despair every day, will not think what he has to say is funny? (Oh, there are a couple of losers who have posted at TMZ, "Oh, they're too sensitive. It's funny. But they are losers, and for every 1 loser who posts that, 999 are shocked and offended.)

Gottfried has paid the price for his insensitivity - AFLAC has fired him (he was the voice of their duck in the commercials). Apparently 75% of Aflac's business actually comes out of Japan.

We now wait to see who the next celebrity jerk is who will make jokes about the tragedy in Japan. I have no doubt that someone will.