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Globe drops comic strip by a flaming racist
By adamg on Sat, 02/25/2023 - 10:15am
The Boston Globe this afternoon became the latest media outlet to annnounce it's dropping Dilbert, now that its author has fully emerged as the racist many people already knew he was.
In a note posted online, Globe Editor Nancy Barnes wrote:
The Boston Globe has made the decision to drop the Dilbert strip in the wake of racist comments by creator Scott Adams on his video show this past week.
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Comments
Saw the video
Wanting to see the source material, I went to Adams' video on YouTube and was amazed by how matter-of-factly he just exclaims so many racist ideas one at a time all triggered by some Rasmussen poll with possibly the dumbest question I've ever heard.
But what amazed me even more were the comments on YouTube that were like Klan mission statements in agreement with him. If he can't read all the upvoted comments and go "holy shit, maybe what I said wasn't what I meant"...then he really meant what he said. And for now, based on a few responses he's made to people on Twitter...he's defending what he said.
Yikes. John H, it's time for Dilbert to go.
Adams has always known for a
Adams has always known for a fact that he's smarter than everybody else. He knows he's right and what he said was correct, and if anybody else is misunderstanding or getting the wrong idea, which of course are the only possible reasons to object, that's their problem because they're idiots.
For that matter
His attitude is the prevailing personality type in the software world, particularity for men of a certain age.
I was one of them, then I grew up
As a young 'un I too thought I was way smarter than everyone else, so I liked Dilbert. As I grew older and wiser and my horizons broadened the appeal fell away.
Dudes like this...
...are the single most toxic element in tech today. All thinking at all times that they're the smartest person in the room, unwilling to credit anyone else with a grain of sense except perhaps another male dev. They are so successful in selling themselves and everyone else on their superiority that they are cosseted and pandered to, and everyone they have friction with is seen as the problem. The worst.
oh my!
This is just too much. Begone, Dilbert!
Dilbert feels stuck in time
Looking just at the strip itself, it's pretty dated at this point. It was sometimes funny in the 1990s. I moved on, the strip didn't. The drawing is basic and the jokes make reference to the sorts of work environment and topics that are waning.
My test of strips is such: Would it still be enjoyable to view if the text bubbles were removed? Zippy passes the test. Dilbert doesn't.
It's time to give new artists the spot.
Stuck in Time?!
I mean, you do realize that Doonesbury will soon be discussing the coming of the dreaded Y2K?
I'll admit that Dilbert is going a different direction as the editorial slant of the Globe, but it does feel like both sides on this issue are going out of their way to prove themselves right.
lol “going a different direction”
what is the objective takeaway from this excerpt of Adams’ video?
I don’t see how anyone
I don’t see how anyone calling Scott a racist has to try very hard to prove their point. The guy said white people should segregate from black people and that blacks are a hate group. Dude cooked his own goose
“There are good people on both sides”
One side is actively racist, the other side is…not actively racist? Yeah, I can’t tell who’s right on this issue either.
Explain
What are both sides of this issue?
Thanks for asking
I am not Scott Adams, so this is just assumptions.
Adams is getting at the hypersensitive nature of discourse in our society. He probably is pondering that there is a minefield involved in interethnic/intercultural relations. Something as little as mispronouncing a name can cause a person to be labeled a racist. A simple statement without any animus can be taken as a racist diatribe (not what he was saying at the time he said this, though this could be the meta of the example.) At the end of the day, by associating only with people who are similar to oneself, such situations can be lessened. In a sense, it's a similar concept to why, decades after higher education was desegregated, a portion of African Americans would prefer to attend HBCUs. It's just more comfortable to avoid the conflicts, though in the long run it is not good for society as a whole. "White flight" is a physical manifestation of the phenomenon, as it is eventually seen as easier to just move away than do deal with the changes to an area.
The other side is the inevitable reaction to Adams' statement, which most likely proves of Adams' that he is correct. Is he racist? Maybe, but again, give most white people enough time, they will be called racist as well.
Hypersensitive
Yeah sure.
Go look in the mirror and try that again.
Let us know when you actually have to deal with racism and sexism in your daily life, and maybe we'll accept your take on this being "hypersensitive".
Have you had to give Waquoit Jr "the talk" yet? No? Or is the simple fact that every black family has to do that once their kids hit school age "hypersensitive"?
Scott Adams isn't "pondering" anything. He's a straight up racist misogynist pig who is catering to same.
What do you know about it?
As a brown Colombian with immigrant parents, I really want to know if you know what "the talk" is? You don't. Your kids have never gotten the shit kicked out of them by the police, they've never been followed around a store, and they've never been suspect.
Stop acting like you've lived this life. Stick to your IPA and Cheese tastings.
How white is thy neighborhood?
You might want to take a long, hard look in your mirror as well.
Meanwhile, Waquiot Jr. has been growing up as one of the few white kids in his class and his school. In fact, we did have to have "the talk" with him last summer when an African American campmate told him to stay away from him because he was white. Now, if we lived in a place like Medford, home to exclusionary beaches, we might not be having these issues, but we choose to live in a diverse area, despite the problems that sometime creep out.
That's...
That is not the "Talk" being referred to here.
I do believe
I have an understanding of "the talk."
That said, my conversations about race with my son are a lot more real world than whatever Swirly's talk with her sons were.
Can you characterize these Adams quotations for us?
(https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-cartoonist-scott-adams-tells-white...)
Nice speech
But it doesn't address the situation at all. Adams didn't "mispronounce a name". He literally said "all white people should avoid all black people".
It's not "hypersensitive" to react poorly to someone saying that. It's normal. Those who don't are themselves racist. The statement is literally a racist statement and normal, good people should reject it.
You're intentionally avoiding what "both sides" are to try to save your point, or him, or for whatever unknown reason you have to do so. But one side here said "avoid black people" and the other side to that would be "white people should not avoid black people". All of the racial minefield bullshit aside, those are the two sides of THIS situation because THAT was his statement.
Why, though?
Why do you always go completely out of your way to trivialize racism?
Every decent paper in America is dropping the comic with their editors writing 1250 words making air-tight cases justifying the decision, and you’re like “maybe Scott Adam’s is getting at something?”
There’s no hidden nuance from Adams, who has been openly far-right for years. Why is it, I wonder, you feel the need to give him the benefit of the doubt?
Also
JFC!
"the hypersensitive nature of discourse in our society"
You mean accountability for saying vile things about other people?
I don't think there's any point in talking to you about how things used to be, because you didn't experience those things, Waquoit. You will never believe any of us who did when we talk about how it was. The truth is, though, that straight white men used to be able to say anything derogatory they wanted to, about anybody (except (some) other straight white men), without any negative consequences at all. On the contrary, the consequences were frequently positive, in the form of approval from other straight white men who enjoyed the bullying. I don't know if I can explain it to you, but not that long ago, straight white men could make racist or sexist or homophobic remarks, anywhere, and if you were the target, there was not one damn thing you could do about it except to walk away and give up your space. And if that space is the workplace, or a doctor's office, or a retail store, or a restaurant, or a concert venue, or any other public accommodation, your options were to endure the abuse in order to get what you needed, or walk away and do without.
Is this something that all straight white men did? No, but if they refrained from this behavior, it was by their choice. I respect those who made that choice, but that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is those who wouldn't govern themselves. And they went on and on and on and on, and made many people's lives hell, until things changed to create accountability for that kind of toxic behavior. And now that this accountability exists (to a degree), you call it "the hypersensitive nature of discourse in our society". I don't think you understand what "discourse" is. It is something that people consent to, that they choose to engage in and can likewise choose not to engage in without harm or penalty. If your boss at work is a racist, you don't consent to their racist actions, and you can't choose to disengage without paying a price that you shouldn't have to pay. If your doctor turns out to be homophobic, or misogynistic, and treats you with contempt, fails to provide proper care and arbitrarily restricts your options because of their bigoted beliefs, you don't consent to that, and you aren't free to simply magic up another doctor. You say "discourse" like it's all an NPR panel, but it isn't, it's real life.
I know what you're going to say next: that everyone is free to walk away from Scott Adams' tiresomely dated comic strip. That is in fact what is happening. No one is obliged to read it, and no one is obliged to carry it. The newspapers that have dropped him understand that their customers will forgo the rest of their content if it comes larded with racism. They are making their decision to walk away.
Discourse. Wow.
The reality is
Given the choice, a lot of people, regardless of race, would rather avoid dealing with the aggravation that comes from interracial conflict. There are white people who feel this way, Black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, and all others. Again, why are HBCUs still a thing, if not for Black students wanting to avoid the bullshit for 4 years? And I get it.
Look, I don't want to pick on you personally, but my deep down feeling is that most of the people who are all up in arms about my comments are white folk who barely deal with nonwhite folk on a regular basis. I, on the other hand, do deal with black people. By and large, things go well, but then there's some asshole who comes at me saying that I did something because I was dealing with a black person, whereas the reality is no. Is it annoying? Definitely. Do I wish that I wouldn't have to deal with such incidents? You bet. The difference with me is that I deal with these things and hope that the next generation deals with this less.
Wow.
Damn. An all-time shit take.
Correlation is not causation
That is entirely possible; however, I really don't think that's the reason why people are (as you put it -- inaccurately, I believe) "all up in arms" about your comments.
…but my deep down feeling is
what if you’re wrong about this?
what if in your attempt to be neutral about this whole thing you are actually propping up Adams’ arguments?
have you considered these questions?
Total Lack of Self-Awareness Here, Waquiot
People are taking issue with your sympathetic word salad defense of Dilbert because you are blaming his unequivocally racist screed on "the other side." In this case, the "other side" is people who are against racism.
I don't care how many times you have been justly or unjustly called a racist, there's no non-racist defense of what Dilbert said.
There's a lot of assuming going on there
For example, is there a difference between trying to understand Adams' viewpoint and espousing it oneself. And to understand the viewpoint is to be able to deal with it. As it is, Adams basically made a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Conversely, yes, the Globe made a swift move to remove the strip from it's pages, but it is still the same publication who gave the award of "Bostonian of the Year" to a woman who publicly said that black women shouldn't marry white men months beforehand, so there's a much more racist statement than what Adams made that was rewarded with honors.
Flag on the play
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque
Huh?
The issue is not the content of the Dilbert comic strip, the issue is that the sole creator of the comic, Scott Adams, is a vile racist who has now plainly stated his racially bigoted beliefs to the world, and he did so in a video he recorded and published openly on the internet. This isn't some 30 year old photo of a guy in a now-offensive Halloween costume or a deceptively edited, secretly recorded video of a private conversation, this is the guy wanting us to know and have a record of his beliefs.
So one side is Scott Adams saying that black people are bad and that white people should segregate themselves from black people. What is the other side of this, that the Boston Globe's editorial position is that black people are actually not bad people?
Did you watch the video
Did you watch the video @Waquiot?
If I as a Black man called all White people a "Hate Group" on YouTube because a Nation of Islam poll said 53 percent of White People said "It's okay to be Black" and urged Black people to "...get the hell away from White people, just get the f**k away … because there is no fixing this.” I'd be branded a racist too.
There is no both sides to this.
Doonesbury
I'm not sure why you felt obliged to "heybut whatabout Doonesbury", and it's been many years since I read it, but the last time I remember reading it (10 years ago?), he was doing strips about Iraq War veterans with PTSD that were a lot more current and relevant than almost anything else on the comics page.
The Sunday strips are still new
The one from yesterday was commenting on the Jan 6th report.
Even the older ones
Last year I went back and reread a bunch of the Watergate-era strips. Both the humor and the commentary is still relevant today. Furthermore, even those strips that depicted isms as they were in the '70s did so in a way that makes sense. It is unlikely that any law school professor today is saying, "Remember, pink assignment sheets for the girls, blue assignment sheets for the boys," but the situation was presented as an outrage, and a contemporary reader will see it as such and understand that this was what women had to put up with in law school.
I was rereading some vintage
I was rereading some vintage Doonesbury and re-discovered a series of strips about Mike naively trying to bond with the black students in the college cafeteria that still hit pretty hard.
Filbert has always been hands
Filbert has always been hands down the worst comic. But I think I was just too young to realize the satire of office life in the 90s
He's also misogynist
He's also been a flaming misogynist for years. Just a generally crappy excuse for a person.
Incel
Before incel was uncool.
Are people just finding out
Are people just finding out that this guy is a huge piece of shit? Hasn't that been common knowledge for years?
The shit keeps getting huger
It's a matter of just how blatant it is, and how hard it is to respond with "two sides" or "just his opinion". With this latest one it has gotten *very difficult indeed*, even for someone who is willfully ignorant.
The message is loud and clear
The message is loud and clear this time with a lot less room for interpretation (although I see someone here is still trying to have an original take, not you of course). Celebrity self immolation is always a big hit.
Yeah, Double Threat podcast has been having a field day...
..with Adams's nonsense for a while now. They offered their thoughts on a tour he did of his (apparently very, very brown) house a couple of years ago, and occasionally they update their audience with updates from his Twitter feed and try to interpret them.
Post updated
The Globe's dropping the strip.
The Globe is doing the right
The Globe is doing the right thing, but this stood out to me:
I'm pretty sure the Globe knows how to update its website more frequently than that.
It's already gone
It's no longer at this link of offerings:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/games-comics/comics/?p1=BGMenu_Sections
It's possible if you know the direct comic URL you'd still be able to see a Dilbert strip. To change that might require the intervention of a team that doesn't normally work weekends.
Something Funny
The Globe comics web section is such that on each comic's page there's a link at the bottom to go to the next comic in their offerings. At the bottom of the Curtis strip there's a link to Dilbert. Click that link and you get a 404 (not found) error as Dilbert is gone.
Given that Curtis is a strip about a black boy, It's metaphorically as if Scott Adams was scared to even have his fictional Dilbert be adjacent to the fictional Curtis in the comic section.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/games-comics/comics/kfcrt/
Yes, I know this is just a coincidence. But still humorous given Adams' tirade.
happy black history month everyone !
happy black history month everyone !
But PlannedChaos says he's a genius!
I thought it should be noted that perhaps the most character-defining behavior of this person is creating an anonymous internet ID under which he vigorously defends Scott Adams, calls him a genius, and contemptuously derides all who criticize him. Sure he's a loathsome racist and misogynist, but he's also utterly pathetic. Is there anything more pitiful and contemptible than a sockpuppet?
A piling-on party is not generally a Good Thing, but in this case it seems so right. In particular his misogyny is near-pathological; Swirly is excessively free with the pejorative "incel", but in this case she's justified.
He tried that on MetaFilter
Adams created a sockpuppet account and posted defenses of Scott Adams. It didn't take long for the members to figure it out, and they were harsh.
I used to think Dilbert was funny, so I signed up for the email feed. Suddenly, I was getting tons of spam, where I had none before. Adams sold his subscribers to spammers. A dirtbag.
"piling-on party"
It's not a "piling-on party". It's a consensus of sane people who are looking at the same thing and coming to the same conclusion. If ten people tell you you're drunk, maybe it's time to lie down.
Almost as funny as the racist
Almost as funny as the racist jokes skit on SNL.
I'd be surprised if he has a single newspaper remaining
to carry his strip, by the end of this week.
I wonder when the
I wonder when the announcement that he’ll be joining Fox News will drop? I mean it seems the next logical step.