new york –
Comic strip Dilbert disappeared in lightning speed following racist remarks by creator Scott Adams, which shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who’s followed both.
Adams, who is white, was outspoken on social media long before he described black people as a “hate group” on YouTube, and for some, Dilbert has strayed from his roots in the chronicle of office culture. I was.
The San Francisco Chronicle editor, who dumped Dilbert last year, said the comic strip “has gone from hilarious to hurtful and mean.” The Los Angeles Times joined dozens of other newspapers in removing the comic following last week’s remarks.
“He ran out of office jokes and started to integrate everything else, so after a while it was hard to tell Scott Adams from Dilbert,” says Mike Peterson, columnist for industry blog The Daily Cartoonist. said.
When individual newspapers told readers that Dilbert was quitting, strip distributor Andrews McMeal Universal said he had cut ties with Adams. It has disappeared from the GoComics site with many of the top comics.
Adams said Monday that the strip, which first appeared in 1989, will be available exclusively through the Locals platform’s subscription service.
Dilbert is effectively dead, Peterson said.
Adams said on YouTube on Monday that his streamers had no choice because clients and other cartoonists were angry. “They were just forced,” he said.
On Twitter, he said his book publisher and book agency “cancelled” him. Your Brain will not be published in September.
Adams has been active on Twitter for a long time, and its CEO, Elon Musk, was one of the few people who publicly endorsed him. He also blogs regularly and publishes regular podcasts on YouTube.
He has drawn attention for comments he has made in the past, including in 2011 when he said women were treated differently by society for the same reasons as children and the mentally ill. He said 2016 Republican presidential nominee Carly Fiorina had an “angry wife face.”
Adams has become a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, saying Trump has hypnotist skills to attract followers. Told.
He lost the prime-time animated Dilbert series that ran for two seasons on UPN for “Being White” when the network decided to target black audiences, citing his racial identity. He said he lost his job at two other companies because of this.
On the Feb. 22 episode of his YouTube podcast, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” he referenced a Rasmussen Report survey that asked whether people agreed with the statement, “It doesn’t matter if you’re white.” bottom. Most agreed, but Adams noted that his 26% of black respondents disagreed and others were unsure.
The Anti-Defamation League said the phrase at the center of the question was circulated as a trolling campaign by members of the infamous anonymous message board 4chan and adopted by some white supremacists. Rasmussen Reports is a conservative polling firm that uses its Twitter account to back 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.” He called the “hate group” remarks “overstated,” but whites continued to defend his advice to “get the hell out of black people.”
In announcing Dilbert’s removal from the Kansas City Star, the newspaper’s Community Engagement editor, Derek Donovan, said Adams’ “hostile, childish macho persona” had been a constant for years. rice field.
“It’s not about canceling culture,” said Richard Green, editor of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in California. “It’s doing the right thing.”
The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Massachusetts, said Monday it blanked out where Dilbert would normally run for office, leaving it until March “to serve as a reminder of the racism that pervades our society.” .
The San Francisco Chronicle stopped publishing Dilbert last October, but there were very few complaints about it. Editor-in-Chief Emilio Garcia Ruiz said in the newspaper that he opposed a strip that said straight men should pretend to be gay to diversify the workplace.
At the Dilbert Strip on September 2nd, my boss said that the traditional performance review would be replaced with an “awakening” score. When the employee complained about being subjective, the boss said, “That’ll take two points off your arousal score, bigot.”
In an August article, Boss said the company was entering the “pandemic prevention market,” creating demand by unleashing deadly viruses.
A black employee who appeared on the Oct. 20 strip said his boss recommended him for a job he was not qualified for, ignoring his actual performance. said and withdrew.
Peterson said there are other instances where Adams’ demeanor has replaced the biting humor that Mr. Peterson and many middle managers loved. Adams seemed to have run out of jokes.
“The strip jumped over the shark,” he said.
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David A. Reeve, AP writer in Jefferson City, Missouri, and Rhonda Schaffner, news researcher in New York, contributed to this report.
