Tonight at my show in Naples, Florida I had to kick this guy out. He wouldn’t stop talking then he said some inappropriate shit. Read for yourself what this guy Joseph Lanham sent me on Facebook after he got kicked out.
Posted by Gary Owen on Saturday, August 12, 2017
If you like being employed, it seems like a bad idea to make racist rants at stand-up comic Gary Owen. The comedian said an audience member went on a tirade Saturday night at a club in North Naples, Florida.
“At one point I was doing a Trump joke, and he said ‘Yeah, there’s more of us than there is of them.’ And he kept talking, so I kicked him out,” Owen said in a video posted to social media.
Thing is, the situation didn’t end there. Owen said the man, Joseph Lanham, sent him several messages on Facebook. The first read [format and wording as depicted in the video]:
Your at a nigga living piece of shit and we are paying for you warefafe loving niggers.
Lanham told Owen to “swim in deep waters,” and called him a “bitch mother f****.”
In return, the comedian said he’d donate $40–the cost of Lanham’s ticket–to the NAACP, and hoped the man’s boss would see the messages.
Welllllllll, Lanham’s boss at National Roofing of Collier, Ralph Goddard, did see these, and fired him from his position as Vice President of Sales.
“It angers you,” Goddard told NBC 2. “I mean, there’s no call for it.”
He said his business got threats of violence over Lanham’s words.
“I was fearful for my employees to even come in this morning because I didn’t know what to expect,” he said.
The outlet reached Lanham, whose wife was also fired from the roofing company, for comment. He refused an on-camera interview, but blamed his actions on alcohol. He said he’s not racist. LawNewz.com could not reach him for comment.
In a follow-up post, Owen said that Lanham deleted his Facebook account.
“Many other ppl [sic] with the name Joseph Lanham has sent me messages saying ppl are leaving negative messages on their page,” he wrote. “The Joseph you are looking for is not on Facebook anymore.”
[Screengrab via Gary Owen]