Actor D.C. Douglas was the voice of the Geico announcer in their commercials. Yes, I said WAS.
He lost his job, allegedly, for leaving a private-citizen voice-mail message on a Tea Party organization's website.
You see, apparently, the Tea Party organization--a company called FreedomWorks, posted Douglas' VM message (along with his home phone, web address and Geico's business number) on a blog and encouraged its members to "Feel free to contact (him) ... call his employer too. Let them know that you ... are now in the market for car insurance."
"I called as a private citizen to make a complaint," Douglas said. "Racism and homophobia are my Achilles' heel, but unfortunately my message included inappropriate words and I am sorry for that. However, telling their members to harass my employer to get me fired is an egregiously disproportionate response to my actions."
But why Douglas? Well, it seems that Geico (not Douglas) is on FreedomWork's boycott list for pulling their ads from Glenn Beck's show. Douglas reportedly believes that once they found out he was associated with Geico, the organization saw the voice-mail as an opportunity to bring negative media attention to Geico.
The day after the organization encouraged members to complain to Geico about their announcer, Geico held auditions to replace Mr. Douglas' voice on the campaign.
From Dime Crunch: "Geico made a quick corporate decision to drop me from the campaign 10 hours after Matt Kibbe's (CEO of FreedomWorks) blog post appeared," Douglas said. "Mind you, I don't blame Geico. They shouldn't have to take on an angry mob over an anonymous voice-over guy. They have a business to run and can't waste time getting caught up in FreedomWorks' circus. And they've been very good to me in the past."
