GEICO VO actor fired for political speech

Here's the story, according to PRWeb:

(Los Angeles, CA) April 21, 2010 -- Los Angeles actor, D.C. Douglas, says he was dropped from the upcoming GEICO "Shocking News" campaign after a group of Tea Party members harassed him and the insurance giant over a private voicemail the actor left for FreedomWorks. Matt Kibbe, President and CEO of FreedomWorks, posted Mr. Douglas' cell phone number in a blog post on biggovernment.com, instructing readers to "Feel free to contact (him)… call his employer too. Let them know that you…are now in the market for car insurance." The next day, GEICO held auditions to replace Mr. Douglas' voice on the campaign.

"I called as a private citizen to make a complaint," explains Mr. Douglas. "Racism and homophobia are my Achilles heal, 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."

For the whole article, click here.

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The Washington Post picked up the story. Here's my response on WashingtonPost.com's 'Voices' section:

I'm one of Mr. Douglas' colleagues in voice-over. We're both successful at a national level, both men with strong political sentiments and a penchant (if not talent) for articulating them.

I work as a freelance announcer for most of the major TV networks and movie studios. Sometimes they, or their parent companies, make choices with which I profoundly disagree. I'm not shy, in those instances, to voice my opinion. I do so as an individual, not as a representative or employee of those companies. To me that makes a big difference.

It's similar to a member of the Armed Services or law enforcement speaking their mind. In uniform, or while acting a representative, one must rightly pay deference to one's employer. It's improper, for instance, for an active-duty service member to call out the President, regardless of politics.

But once out of uniform and speaking as a civilian without citing rank etc., things are different -- we have this gorgeous and maddening First Amendment, crafted to indemnify us as we say our piece, even if it includes invective or non-PC word choices, as in the case of Mr. Douglas' voicemail huff.

I happen to agree with some of Douglas' sentiments on the Tea Party, if not his choice of words or level of tact. As a gay man who embraces diversity, I am unsettled by polling that points to ethnic near-uniformity among Tea Partiers, and I'm scared by a lot of the tweets and Facebook posts I read from Tea Party leadership -- i.e. "McCarthy was right!"

But it wouldn't matter to me if Mr. Douglas' ideology was polar opposite to my own, say if he were a gung ho Tea Partier himself. It'd be his American right to hold that perspective and articulate it. Those who follow my activism know I've made some strange bedfellows over the years, including my defending the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church's right to conduct what I consider hatemongering.

Meanwhile, it's certainly GEICO's legal right to hire or not hire whomever they please for their VOs. But their releasing Mr. Douglas purely for of his political speech saddens me, and not just because a colleague is out of a gig.

It feels like a step backward for all of us.

Ben Patrick Johnson
Los Angeles, CA

The Vatican is playing a dangerous, destructive game

I’ve had a few people following my Twitter and Facebook feeds ask why I’m so riled up about the Vatican’s pedophilia crisis. I want to explain, but can’t fit it into 140 characters.

Initially, I was troubled by the allegations of abuse. There was the string of outrageous cases we’ve heard about over the past few years -- predatory priests being moved around from parish to parish, even internationally, to quiet or make moot victims’ complaints. The result has been what one would expect: a multiplication of damage instead of a mitigation. As more and more cases became public, it grew clear Roman Catholic officials knew what was going on; it was they who facilitated the moves in each instance, suggesting (in a striking misplacement of compassion) it was for the good of the priest or, as in the letter revealed last week by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), for the “good of the Universal church.” Put in contemporary terms, it'd be bad PR if people knew what was really going on.

All this made me shake my head in disgust. But it's not been fodder for me to get on my soapbox. Things have changed.

Multiple statements have come out from Roman Catholic leadership in recent days suggesting blame be laid on targets as wide-ranging as Judaism and mass media. But the loudest and most troubling is the insistence that the church doesn’t have a pedophile problem, it has "a homosexual problem." This rickety proposition was first floated by William Donohoe, president of the Catholic League, in a full page ad in the New York Times and in interviews with the major news outlets. Then on Monday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s de facto Secretary of State, said the following in Chile:

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.”

Wait -- he’s been “told?”

Not only is Cardinal Bertone relying on hearsay, but that hearsay is completely wrong, as evidenced by every reputable study available. Perhaps the Vatican doesn’t have access to the Internet and search engines to verify the most basic of information?

I’m being sarcastic. In truth, what’s going on is a calculated, systemic indictment of a group of people, in this case gays. This is what happened in Germany in the 1920s when a rising political movement vilified Jews. We know where that led. It’s happened around the world and in America to various ethnic and religious groups, resulting in discrimination and violence. Each new wave of immigrants that reaches America's borders -- from the Irish in the 19th century after the potato famine, to Italians fleeing disease and starvation, to people of Latin heritage today -- must endure an period of outright persecution before being accepted into the mainstream. Political movements like the Tea Party capitalize on the public's fear, institutionalizing it through repetition and propaganda. Just ask a Tea Party follower about immigration and listen to their frighteningly sectarian talking points.

As a group, gays in particular have had a mixed go of things recently. In Mexico City, same-sex marriage is now legal. Meanwhile, in Uganga, a top government official has been attempting to make being gay a capitol offense punishable by death. For certain, anti-gay sentiment -- inflamed by rhetoric like that coming out of the Vatican this week -- leads to tragedy. This is not conjecture, like the Vatican’s noodling. This is broadly evidenced fact.

Systemic defamation is ALWAYS wrong, whether it comes from the Tea Party, the Ugandan Parliament, or the Roman Catholic Church and its Holy See.

The Vatican should be ashamed of their maneuvering. They should own up to the church leadership's tragic mistakes and work diligently to put things right rather than pick a vulnerable group upon whom to transfer blame. The Church exists to honor the teachings of Jesus Christ. Right now, I can only think Christ would be horrified at what Roman Catholic hierarchy has posited in his name. As a Christian and a gay man I, along with others, refuse to sit silent while this perversion continues.

That is why I’ve been so vocal about this issue. Count on my continuing to speak out.

How's that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?

Sarah Palin. Sigh ... what can we say? (A lot.)

For the moment, this: Did you hear her keynote address at the Tea Party Convention? If you missed it, here's a recap.

There were plenty of moments to make you spit milk through your nose. The one that really got me was when she asked, speaking generally to President Obama, "How's that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?"

I was struck by the image of a sneering ugly stepsister who's locked Cinderella in the cellar on the night of the ball asking, "How's that dating that datey-princey stuff working out for ya?"

There's a malice to this woman that gives me chills. In 2008, I laughed at her. She quit her job and I thought she had closed the lid on her own political coffin and we were done with her.

Now I'm getting scared.

BPJ