Dumbert

I used to read Scott Adams' comic strip "Dilbert" all the time, and I loved it, because it was a perfect reflection of office culture.  (Yes, I actually used to work in an office.)  But over time, it became apparent that Adams created the strip not to laugh with white-collar workers but to laugh at them.  He was not just making fun of managers but the whole workforce, from the guys and gals in the cubicles to the corporate trainers to the personnel directors . . . and he made the fear of being laid off a punchline at a time when more and more companies began to lay people off left and right.  (And, he's made fun of unions.)  His humor got more mean-spirited over time, and I more or less fell out of love with Dilbert and his cohorts.  It makes sense that Charles Schulz - whom Adams said he wanted to be - was more enthusiastic about Patrick McDonnell's "Mutts" and gave advice to "Pearls Before Swine" creator Stephan Pastis on how to draw a strip when Pastis (whom Adams championed) was still a lawyer.  (Schulz, alas, didn't live to see "Pearls Before Swine" debut.) 

More recently, Adams has championed Donald Trump as a skilled politician and an effective populist, and he enthusiastically supported his Presidency.  Okay, a lot of decent people have an inexplicable attraction to Trump.  But Scott Adams proved to be anything but decent.  He recently cited a poll taken by Rasmussen - a right-wing push poll that exaggerates Republican strength - that showed nearly half of blacks having a problem with white people.  Responding to this questionable poll, Adams said that black people are a "hate group" and white people should just stay away from blacks as much as possible.

Newsflash, Scott: White people already tried that back in the 1950s but it didn't work out.

As for the poll itself, black writer Jeff Charles said on Twitter that the poll was "blatantly false. They are either dishonest or inept at polling black Americans. I wouldn't trust them to analyze attitudes among black people. I can assure you the vast majority of us don't care about white people being white."

Anyway, as someone who has enjoyed the company of black people in general and black women in particular - at least before COVID ruined everything - I found Adams' comments appalling as sin.  So have most newspapers - "Dilbert" has been canceled from the overwhelming majority of papers that carried the strip.  Two high-profile papers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, did not drop "Dilbert" - mainly because they don't have comics sections in the first place - but I'm sure they wish they did just so they could drop Adams.

Adams has refused to apologize for his remarks, citing his belief in free speech and tooting his own self-righteous horn.  But investigative reporter Hunter Walker summed up Adams' whole attitude toward the world on Twitter.  Adams, Walker tweeted, "is a fundamentally unserious person. He is not an intellectual. He is an angry man ranting in a home office while being scared of some of his neighbors. This is true of most self-styled racist thinkers."

I think Walker gives Adams too much credit for thinking.  Because he's not a thinker at all.  What Adams is, is a fraud.  Good riddance. 😠

And in a world of Dogberts and Catberts . . . be Earl or Mooch. 😃