The comic strip “Dilbert” quickly disappeared after a racist comment by creator Scott Adams, but that should come as no surprise to anyone who follows him.
Adams, who is white, had an outspoken presence on social media long before describing black people as a “hate group” on YouTube and, for some, “Dilbert” has strayed from color as a chronicler of office culture.
The editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, which dumped “Dilbert” last year, said the comic “went from funny to sick and mean.” The Los Angeles Times, which joined dozens of other newspapers in dropping the comic following last week’s comments, quietly replaced four of Adams’ pieces last year.
“They ran out of office jokes and started putting all this other stuff together, so after a while, it became hard to tell the difference between Scott Adams and ‘Dilbert,'” said Mike Peterson, a columnist for the industry blog The Daily Cartoonist.
As individual newspapers told viewers they put “Dilbert”, the company that distributed the strip, Andrews McMeel Universal, said it was severing relations with Adams. On Monday, “Dilbert” disappeared from the GoComics site, which also features many top comics such as “Peanuts” and “Calvin and Hobbes.”
Adams said that Strip, which first appeared in 1989, will only be available as a subscription service on the Locals platform.
“Dilbert” is effectively dead, Peterson said.
Adams said Monday on YouTube that his distributor had no choice because his clients and other cartoonists were angry. “He was just forced,” he said.
On Twitter, he said that his book publisher and book agent had “cancelled” him. Portfolio imprint Penguin Random House said it will not publish Adams’ book “Reframe Your Brain” in September, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Adams has long been active on Twitter, whose CEO, Elon Musk, is among the few who support him. He also blogs regularly and puts out regular podcasts on YouTube.
He drew attention for comments he had made in the past, including saying in 2011 that women were treated differently by society for the same reasons as children and the mentally disabled – “it’s just easier for everyone.” He said 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina had “the face of an angry wife.”
Adams has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, saying Trump has hypnotic skills to attract followers. He said the stance would cost him money to cover the cost of missing speakers.
He said that he lost the prime-time animated “Dilbert” series that ran on UPN for two seasons to “be white” when the network decided to target the Black audience, and that he lost two other company projects because of race.
During the Feb. 22 episode of the YouTube podcast “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” he referenced a Rasmussen Reports survey that asked whether people agree with the statement “It’s not going to be white.” Most agreed, but Adams noted that 26% of Black respondents disagreed and the rest were unsure.
The Anti-Defamation League said the word at the center of the question was popularized as a trolling campaign by members of 4chan – a well-known anonymous message board – and adopted by some white supremacists. Rasmussen Reports is a conservative polling firm that uses its Twitter account to endorse false and misleading claims about the COVID-19 vaccine, the election and the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Adams repeatedly referred to black people as members of “hate groups” or “racist hate groups” and said he would not “help Black Americans.” In Monday’s podcast, he called the “hate group” remarks “hyperbole,” but continued to defend his suggestion that white people “get the hell away” from Blacks.
In announcing that “Dilbert” would be cut from the Kansas City Star, the paper’s community engagement editor, Derek Donovan, said Adams’ “antagonistic, macho childishly persona” had persisted for years.
“It’s not canceling the culture,” editor Richard Green of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in California said. “It’s doing the right thing.”
The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Massachusetts, left empty space Monday where “Dilbert” used to run and said it will remain until March “as a reminder of the pervasive racism in our society.”
The San Francisco Chronicle stopped publishing “Dilbert” last October — a move that drew only a few complaints. Editor-in-Chief Emilio Garcia-Ruiz said in the newspaper that he has objected to the strip that said in an effort to get a different workplace, straight people should pretend to be gay.
In the “Dilbert” strip on September 2, the boss said that traditional performance reviews will be replaced by “wokeness” scores. When employees complain that they can be subjective, the boss said, “It will cost you two points from the wokeness score, bigot.”
In the August line, the boss said that the company entered the “pandemic prevention market” and created demand by releasing the deadly virus.
A Black worker featured in the October 20 strip noted that the boss ignored his real achievements to recommend him for a job he was not qualified for. Employees resign when they are told they will get a big salary.
Peterson said there is another example of how Adams’ attitude has changed the biting humor that Peterson and legions of middle managers love. Adams seemed to have run out of jokes.
“The strip jumps the shark,” he said.
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