Fuck both those guys
That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? We have the power to somehow, in some way cancel people for being, for instance, racist as hell. So get to work! Chant the magic words, wave your fairy wands, summon the spirits of expulsion, whatever, and banish Scott Adams to some pit on the fringes of Sheol. He’s the face of bland, casual, rich white person racism.
I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people,the 65-year-old author exclaimed.Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.Reiterating that whites need to
escape,Adams said that he had already done so by moving to an areawith a very low Black population.He then cited Black CNN anchor Don Lemon to justify his assertion that there’s acorrelationbetween amostly Blackneighborhood anda bunch of problems he didn’t seein majority-white areas.
So I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore,Adams huffed.It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off.He continued:
The only outcome is I get called a racist. That’s the only outcome. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you’re white. It’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying.
This rant was prompted, he claims, by a survey that showed that the phrase “It’s OK to be white” was considered racist by almost half of black people. How considerate of Adams to immediately confirm that opinion.
If we can’t “cancel” Scott Adams, then “canceling” is a toothless, imaginary threat. The difficulty lies in the fact that Adams is rich, his comic makes lots of money for a tangle of distributors (Andrews McMeel Syndication, Universal Uclick, GoComics, etc.), and all you have to do is look at the comics page of any newspaper to see that this is an industry locked in to nearly permanent frozen rigidity. Adams knows this. He can afford to be smug and safe and bigoted.
He can be pulled by individual newspaper chains, though.
Amid the incorporation of the anti-”woke” plot lines, Dilbert was dropped last September from 77 newspapers by publisher Lee Enterprises. Adams, for his part, claimed the move “was part of a larger overhaul” of comic syndication. At the same time, however, he also said it’s “possible” the strip was pulled for other reasons.
I suspect that all we can do is recognize that Adams is a front for racism, and while we can’t do anything about him, we certainly can judge our friends and family who post Dilbert comics on their office door and send them around via Facebook. That’s all “canceling” is, anyway.
Precisely what effort is it that he’s giving up on? What has he tried to do?
I suspect his help extended as far as telling Black people to just work harder. That’s usually how that goes.
I’m not surprised a bunch of black people would think the phrase “It’s okay to be white” is racist given it seems to be used regularly by white people who are racist.
Not least because Dilbert was stale and hackneyed when I quit reading it nearly twenty years ago…
I have a sneaking suspicion that Black America will not miss his “help”, whatever the hell that entailed.
I like “Dilbert,” but as Dunc says, it’s got a bit stale lately. The corporate culture it’s making fun of hasn’t changed all that much, so I don’t expect the strip to change a lot in the foreseeable future either. So yeah, maybe we should get rid of it. Not that that will change Adams’s attitude all that much…
“So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off.”
When the fuck was Adams ever helpful to black people? I can imagine that most of them would be overjoyed to never interact with Adams or his ilk in their lives.
It wouldn’t take any effort for me to cancel or boycott Adams as I never followed Dilbert or him. It would be a non-action on my part. But I’m fine with continuing to not look at Dilbert or otherwise support this jackass.
I think when people lose their relevance they see courting controversy as a viable marketing plan. In the short term they get more eyeballs, but whatever legacy they may have had goes into the crapper.
If Dilbert came out as trans the comic strip would be dropped in a hot New York second.
My favorite comic of old was 9 Chickweed Lane. I liked the plot line, the characters and the artwork. However, the Houston Chronicle received a wave of complaints from the “good xians with strong family values,” i.e. buckle-hatted Calvinists, that the drawings were “titillating and suggestive.” It was replaced with some stupid, banal strip; poorly drawn and never funny.
Rich white man has woes. Must be Black people’s fault. More at 11.
No, no, no! We should help him get his heart’s desire.
Move him, lock, stock and barrel to a guaranteed to remain perpetually a 100% white neighborhood. I suggest the geological south pole.
Everything will be as white as he loves, we can move like minded people there as well and the bonus is, we won’t have to ever hear from them again, as the same support they’ll get is the support that they claimed to give.
Mummification services would, of course, be entirely free of charge.
Ohhh…. I was wondering what this mysterious survey was where he was claiming half of all black Americans said they “weren’t okay with white people”.
So he is equating “The phrase ‘It’s okay to be white’ is racist” with “I am not okay with white people”. Okay… dishonest and no language skills. Got it.
Good advice, actually. If I was a black person I would want Adams and people like him to get the hell away from me. Even as a white person I would appreciate if they would stay the hell away from me.
Is that why you “help” people, dude? For the payoff?
“Due to disappointing returns, I will be suspending my altruistic endeavors until further notice.”
I haven’t seen Dilbert in years. I assume it’s on its way to zombie comic status alongside Prince Valiant and Gasoline Alley.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard…
What hasn’t he done to help Black America! Why just last year he introduced his first Black character in the thirty year history of his strip. He even made Dave an engineer just like Dilbert! His first line was “I identify as White”, so you can see he was just as funny as Dilbert.
Of course, Black America wasn’t as appreciative of this as Adams expected, so Dave hasn’t been seen in the strip at all lately. Really, Black America has nobody but themselves to blame.
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/05/03/dilbert-presents-black-character-gets-dragged/
I remember when comics were actually good–Calvin and Hobbes, anyone?–but now most are like Dilbert: stale and unfunny.
He’s sort of the anti-Charles Schultz.
I wonder if he actually knows any black people?
His strip could end up like Doonesbury after the right had it “canceled” where many newspapers dropped it and the ones that kept it put in the classified section.
The best comics makers appear to get bored and quit, or they find they are running out of inspiration and quit.
Calvin and Hobbes, Get Fuzzy. And wossname, Zippy?
Gary Larson only made single panel cartoons, but he crammed a comics worth of information into them.
A good comic strip that remains is Pearls Before Pigs. BTW can I count XKCD as a cartoon?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal sometimes has several panels, so a comic strip?
Of course “canceling” won’t affect Scott Adams. Scott Adams is one of the most revered thought leaders among the right. He is beloved and listened to intently by a huge number of people who are the open and avowed enemies of liberals and leftists. He doesn’t care what you or I think, he doesn’t have to care, and the people whose thoughts he cares about do not want him to care what you or I think. Social shunning only works, has only ever worked, on people who value the company of those shunning them.
As an anarchist influenced by Marxism, this is something I find infuriating about liberals, their insistence that if they make the right appeals and think the right thoughts, and make overheated moral declarations (like yours, to be frank) to people who have no reason to listen to them and follow a completely different idea of what is just and moral, they can bring the great powers that they believe to rule the universe over to your side and impose justice on the world by fiat. In practice, this leads to leftists and left-liberals canceling one another, because there are serious reputational and financial costs to banning famous and influential people like Scott Adams, but virtually none to banning some “influencer” with 170 followers who could easily replace that unimportant rando’s content with somebody else’s. Thus, the social media platforms are easily able to manipulate “cancel culture” to turn leftists against one another and make banning leftists seem progressive, while every attempt to “cancel” a right-wing figure like Scott Adams inevitably fails unless it’s done by other reactionaries, and even then Scott Adams is way more costly to punish than a bunch of Nazi wannabes with anime bishoujo avatars who embarrassed the platform with a loud and public flame war over whether Nazis with furry avatars can be regarded as true Nazis.
The state and the social media oligarchs will not save you. They are not your friends and they are not looking out for you. They care for nothing but power and money, and money is just a mathematical abstraction of power. Nobody is going to cancel Scott Adams, or Dave Chappelle, or J.K. Rowling. Nobody is going to fix Twitter to not be a cesspool of propaganda run by a manic crypto-fascist with the emotions of an 8-year-old. The Atlantic and the New York Times, the ancient bastions of liberalism, are now accessories to the incipient genocide of queer people. The society we live in cannot be reformed, only destroyed and rebuilt.
Might I suggest he move to Russia. It’s mostly white and has plenty of space to spare.
He’s been cancelled for years, but as you note, not everyone has got the memo.
@tankermottind, fairly close, but not quite enough to win the cigar.
While money matters little to those with power, that’s because it’s only a tool. Still, with money does come a level of power in and of itself. OJ Simpson went on trial for his life despite his wealth at the time, that wealth then was used as a tool to buy his way to freedom in spite of overwhelming evidence against him.
Oliver North had little money, liked under oath to Congress and was caught with Film At 11, never was charged.
But, the civil rights era also taught a lesson. When two sizable groups, despite being a minority and heavily oppressed align in desires, one violent, the other only costing one’s regime tons of money and peaceful, well, the survival instinct informs us which group will get negotiated with – the peaceful ones.
First, they’ll not have earned the popular ire as much as those who are violent. Second, they are costing the whole ball of wax tons of money in boycotts, strikes and even traffic snarls. Can’t blow them away, they’re non-violent, so they’re easily in sight, they can be negotiated with and that disarms the violent group.
Yet oddly, without overthrowing anything. Just inconveniencing and costing money. Well, with the backup, however unwanted, of the violent peerage.
The hard part is avoiding getting into a circular firing squad.
Unbelievable that Scott Adams has become the Pointy-Haired Boss.
Thornapple #23
Scott Adams was the Pointy-Haired Boss right from the beginning.
@24
seemed that way to me as well. Always felt like a very conventional middle class comic to me very safe with the pointy finger at “those others”
@19
it is often the case that what the conservative is advocating for is often self-destructive in practice and application more so the more radical they are
White people should get the fuck away from Scott Adams.
I was on his mailing list back in the late ninties, and I wound up unsubscribing after a few weeks as he came off as petty and cruel, and seemed to enjoy egging on others to be so as well. I haven’t read Dilbert since the 2000s. He’s enjoys being a dick and he’ll keep making hateful comments to the day he dies.
It IS okay to be white. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.
There, I’ve helped Scott Adams and chums. Took two whole sentences, and one of those was unnecessary.
No no. No need to thank me. I think the word “hero” is for other people to use. I’ll wait for my Nobel Peace Prize quietly.
Louis
Sounds more like he’s angling to be the Pointy-Hooded Boss
“We are dropping the Dilbert comic strip because of creator Scott Adams’ racist rant: Letter from the Editor”
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/02/we-are-dropping-the-dilbert-comic-strip-because-of-creator-scott-adams-racist-rant-letter-from-the-editor.html
Some history behind “It’s OK to be white” (Mastodon thread):
https://masto.ai/@parkermolloy/109925838043855926
Face value of “It’s OK to be white” is its a true statement. But its face value is not what it is used for or why it exists. The face value is a misdirection so racists can openly deny structural racism. And structural racism is why Adams sees bad things in majority POC neighbourhoods.
Maybe Adams should do a course in CRT?
“As an anarchist influenced by Marxism, this is something I find infuriating about liberals…”
someday, you are going to realize that you have stripped YOURSELF of any power you might have, simply by labeling yourself something silly and unworkable. By then though, it will be far too late for you to do anything about it, and you likely will end up in a spiral of depression as you repeatedly try and convince yourself that it is the world that is wrong, and not you.
Good luck.
“He’s sort of the anti-Charles Schultz.”
Is he though? I guess people don’t recall the reaction to the release of Franklin as a Peanuts character.
DanDare, you’re not the only one to make this valid point.
Obviously akin to “all lives matter”.
Ichthyic @33, huh?
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_(Peanuts)
@28. pgator : “Sounds more like he’s angling to be the Pointy-Hooded Boss.”
Thread won!
@31. DanDare : “Maybe Adams should do a course in CRT?”
No “maybe” about it. Definitley he should! But as usual the people who most need to face and grasp the issues here are a big part of the problem and least likely to do so – and least willing to learn.
The USA and really everywhere else in the world that they’ve damaged; needs some publicly funded anti-Murdoch / reichwing deprogramming channel that debunks and reverses Murdoch brain-washing though I doubt we’ll ever get that.. Plus Murdoch & other reichwing disinfo propaganda outlets all need to lose their licences and just be stopped from being broadcast and rotting people’s minds. The damage they’ve done is just incalculable really. Especially when it comes to Global Overheating and driving a lack of action there but also in their inciting of racism, homophobia, bigotry generally and the rise of fascist politics.
@19. tankermottind :
Really? For example? Yes, leftwing politics can get into “splitterr!” style fragmentation and arguments and notoriously doesn’t unite in the way the reichwing does. Not sure that’s quite the same thing.
Really? See current newest thread here : https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/02/25/hmmm-i-was-right/
If every attempt to “cancel” (silly phrase but anyhow) rightwing figures fails why do the reichwingers seem so scared of it and keep whinging and carrying on about it?
Hmm. thing is that the “state” is people. (Like Soylent Green – but very different!) States which are democratic give the People of that state the ability to decide what the state’s policies are. Of course, then there’s problems with the People eg being brainwashed by media corporations, outdated regressive ideas and so on but, anyhow. What do you think the state is & means in a Democracy?
As for social media, no, the oligarchs won’t save us but social media is a tool that enables us to do some things better and spread ideas and communicate and organise better. It seems to me you’re essentially saying the eqivalent of book and newspaper oligarchs won’t save us. Also true, also I think missing the point that this is a tool that can be used for good and ill to shape the views of People who in turn make up and get at least some say over what the State is and does. Do you see what I’m saying here?
When has that ever suceeded? Where has that been tried and with what results?* What has that always resulted in? A lot of people depend on the state to survive and you seem pretty blase about the impact this has on alot of other individual human lives. What does it actually mean to “destroy” a state and recall the bit about states being made up of people.
Is it really true to say our society cannot be reformed and improved? I don’t think so. Was FDR’s New Deal a case where society reformed positively? Was Obamacare a reform that changed things any? Did the Roe vs Wade decision and the sexual reviolution reform society or destroy and rebuild it? Did the Marshal Plan in Europe reform or was that purely rebuilding destroyed societies? What works best in creating happy and prosperous and increasingly equal and socially just societies?
I think if we look at the list of happiest nations with the highest standards of living and the most opportunities for the most people then we find countries like Iceland, the Netherlands, Denmark etc ..and so we need to see and emulate those.** High taxes, high services, jailing bankers, no Murdoch press and more. Importantly here a mix of socialist and capitalist features that are at least somewhat balanced and no extremes. Now, not saying those nations are completely perfect and I don’t think we’ll ever have any actual Utopia but we can get a lot closer to it by trying and by reforming than by burning things down and rebuilding and, again, how often is what’s rebuilt after destruction that much better? At what cost?
.* Examples? For me, Cambodia under Pol Pot and Mao’s Cultural Revolution spring to mind here. Maybe the French Revolution too? Yes, totalitarian, brutal and ugly. Also, ultimately failures really. Does your assessment differ and, if so, how and why?
.** See : https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world
John, try reading for comprehension:
“I guess people don’t recall the reaction to the release of Franklin”
The wiki article you cited covers FRANKLIN, not the reaction to the character. and you prove my point, precisely, given you had to:
1. look up wiki
2. fail to realize what I actually said.
conga rats.
Well, Ichthyic. Yes, I had to look up when the character was introduced, since I was not reading Peanuts in 1968, and that’s the period to which you referred. I mean, I was living in Spain and had never seen the strip at the time, nevermind follow popular opinion on the other side of the world.
Anyway. The closest that article comes to a reaction is this bit:
“In an interview in 1997, Schulz discussed receiving a letter from a Southern editor “who said something about, ‘I don’t mind you having a black character, but please don’t show them in school together.'”
That’s pretty muted. If you’re suggesting that “He’s sort of the anti-Charles Schultz.” is a misleading claim, then perhaps you should indicate why so.
Apparently, Schultz introduced the character to be a little more inclusive having had his attention drawn to that, and did it it a sympathetic way.
Is that what Adams did? horrabin @13 suggests otherwise, and that’s basically what I know. And, if neither of those perceptions are incorrect, then the claim is not that disputable, hyperbolic as it may be.
(Care to specify what it was you wrote that you imagine I did not comprehend?)
StevoR, you’re reaching.
Here: https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2018/01/12/the-dechristianization-of-france-during-the-french-revolution/
(Not racist, but)
Which makes it kind of funny that Schultz never did show Franklin and Charlie Brown in school together. Instead he made Franklin a classmate of (white) Peppermint Patty (who had been established earlier as going to a different school).