GEICO Announcer Fired For Voicemail Left To Teabagger Group

Voice-over actor D.C. Douglas, best known for his "save up to 15%" tags on GEICO commercials, has been fired by the insurance giant after a voicemail he left for Dick Armey's FreedomWorks was widely circulated in the right-wing blogosphere. Douglas' home phone number was then posted on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government site.

"I called as a private citizen to make a complaint," explains Mr. Douglas. "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." Mr. Douglas believes his connection to GEICO, a company already on FreedomWorks' boycott list for pulling their ads from Glenn Beck's show, is the main reason he was targeted so forcefully. "Even though I left the message during the week of March 23, the harassing calls didn't hit until April 14, the morning after I posted about my GEICO campaign on my Facebook page."

It's not clear if Douglas is gay, although in all press accounts of the firing, he mentions being enraged by the homophobia of the Tea Party movement. His message to FreedomWorks asked "how many retarded people" work there and whether the group would take responsibility when one of their members killed somebody. Douglas says he doesn't blame GEICO for his firing, but he's open to suing FreedomWorks.