Geico voice actor fired after insulting tea parties

Sometimes you have a headline that makes the rest of the story superfluous, but here's the background. Actor Lance Baxter, otherwise known as "D.C. Douglas," currently known as the man who informs you how much Geico can save you on car insurance, left a message last month with FreedomWorks in which he asked the group how many "mentally retarded" people it had on staff and what it would do when a tea partyer "killed someone." On April 14, FreedomWorks put his voicemail online.

Today, Douglas reports he's been dropped from Geico's campaign. His dramatic news release is here; he claims to have been motivated by "the recent gay and racial slurs slung by Tea Party members at Congressman Barney Frank and Representative John Lewis during the Health Care Reform Weekend," and says he's "open to any attorneys taking on this case pro bono."

In the meantime, if you want to hire him: