Bad-taste humor can be costly, but that’s how Gilbert Gottfried works

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

‘You couldn’t ask for a more inappropriate human being,” often off-color radio host Howard Stern said recently, and not unadmiringly, of loose-cannon comic Gilbert Gottfried. It may well be true.

Gottfried has, for instance, portrayed the late Pope John Paul II as a racist, gay-bashing, anti-Semitic vampire. At a New York roast three weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, he made a wisecrack about the attacks that drew hisses — but recovered with an outrageously filthy telling of the classic joke later immortalized in the 2005 documentary “The Aristocrats.”

In March, Gottfried’s comedic callousness backfired like never before. After posting several Twitter quips that made light of Japan’s devastating tsunami crisis, the longtime voice of insurance giant Aflac’s duck mascot was canned from his lucrative gig. Gottfried’s offending tweets vanished soon thereafter and he apologized for, well, being himself.

Last week, after an intensive monthlong search, the company announced Gottfried’s replacement — a 36-year-old radio station manager from suburban Minneapolis. If he’s into natural disaster and bestiality jokes, we haven’t heard.

Gottfried, unbowed, tweeted on Monday, “I refuse to say anything that might seem insensitive about Osama bin Laden’s death so let me say my thoughts & prayers are with Al-Qaeda.”

Prior to this week’s multiday residency at Zanies comedy clubs in Chicago and suburbs, the self-deprecating and self-flagellating Gottfried spoke about his latest controversy, his new memoir Rubber Balls and Liquor (St. Martin’s Press) and his unlikely success. His voice, which during performances and other “on” moments has a cheese-grater-like effect on the eardrums, was far less annoying than you might think.

Q. Let’s get our Jay Leno-Hugh Grant moment out of the way: What the hell were you thinking?

A. [Laughs.] Well, I was originally thinking of picking up a black hooker and taking her to my car.* Which would have been the smarter move. But the funny part about it is, [the Twitter jokes] became bigger than the actual tsunami — the way the press covered it. And what I liked is [how] the press referred to what I said as “comments and remarks.” They would avoid the word “jokes.” Because once you say “jokes,” it kind of lets the air out of the sails, and people go, “What a minute. Jokes? Oh, you mean the kind of bad-taste jokes everyone tells at the water cooler or e-mails to each other whenever a tragedy occurs?”

Q. And that Gilbert Gottfried is famous for telling.

A. Yeah, the star of “The Aristocrats” did something off color! And I love the way the press were all shocked and offended by what I said, but they’re all repeating it. But it’s OK, because they prefaced it by saying, “We hate to have to tell you this.” And the first people who really jumped on it, and who were the most shocked, offended and hurt by it, were TMZ.com and Perez Hilton. He draws penises on movie stars’ faces and he was quite shocked and offended.

Q. Was the tsunami outrage even bigger than the Sept. 11-Friars Club backlash?

A. Oh, much bigger. Much bigger. This was like an international incident.

Q. Are you still sailing along pretty much as you were before — minus Aflac?

A. The funny thing about it is I’m still doing clubs and stuff like that, and still working. When I actually first left my apartment after seeing all this and figuring there’ll be like, lynch mobs waiting for me, people would come up to me with a scared look on their face and go, “Oh, I know I’m gonna go to hell for saying this, but I laughed at two of those jokes.” And it’s like, everybody does [laughs]. For a while there were these cars parked outside my building and film crews waiting in hallways of my building or in other hallways. Because I’d get out of my building, and then out of another hallway a door would swing open and a camera crew would run out.

Q. The Aflac ads had to have made up a significant portion of your income. Did you take a huge hit financially?

A. Yeah. Um, see, I can’t really talk about Aflac, ’cause …

Q. Will you try out for more commercial spots?

A. Yeah. But I don’t think I’m gonna get the Benihana account.

Q. A lot of people probably think you’re “on” all the time. Are they taken aback when you talk like a normal person and act sedate?

A. Yeah, sometimes when I talk to people — ’cause God knows that in real life I’m like Sir Alec Guinness — I think they’re somewhat surprised. But I’m the same way. I’m not immune to that. Like, I never met Clint Eastwood, but if he just said, “Hi, how are you?” I would think, “Why isn’t he talking between clenched teeth and saying, ‘Make my day’?”

Q. Being “on” must be exhausting.

A. The most exhausting thing that was horrible was with the book. Later on, after they had printed it, they finally get this audio book deal. And that to me was hell. My throat was hurting, my head was pounding, I was depressed. By the third day I pulled back totally and I was Mr. Rogers on Quaaludes.

Q. You were failing in school. You had no marketable skills. You’ve got what you call an “irritating” voice. A lot of people are probably wondering how you got to be so successful.

A. God knows. I got to be this successful, and if I stay away from Twitter I can remain successful.

Q. Are you more fearful now about going over the line?

A. It goes through my head, but it seems like I obviously can’t stop myself.