Disability insurer Aflac Inc fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried

Disability insurer Aflac Inc fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of its iconic duck on Monday after a series of Twitter jokes about the earthquake in Japan, the company's most important market. Since 2000, Gottfried has voiced the duck in the insurer's TV ad campaign in the United States, quacking"Af-LAC!" in the comedian's famously abrasive voice. Gottfried fired off a dozen jokes on the social media service over the weekend, allriffing in one way or another on the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami. But the company said his comments "were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac." Aflac said it would start a nationwide casting call to find a new voice -- and notedthat it was already using a different voice in the Japanese market, where it is the No. 1 foreign insurer. The company made its name selling cancer expense policies in Japan in the 1970s, and still derives aboutthree-quarters of its revenuein the country.