Another week, yet another act of verbal self-immolation that is absolutely and breathtakingly lacking in even a modicum of self-awareness of the blatant racism being spewed.
This time, “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams finds himself square in the cross-hairs of outrage with hundreds of newspapers that syndicated/reprinted the strips dropping “Dilbert” from their funny pages.
Truth be told, it was hard not to be shocked that there apparently are still hundreds of newspapers in circulation in this country having watched the brutal downsizing in the newsrooms and conversion en masse to digital platforms and delivery as well as the major consolidation/mergers of local newspapers by national publishers.
The last time I can actually remember purchasing a local newspaper was the Black Friday edition of Raleigh’s “The News and Observer” (or “The Noise and Disturber”, more like!) many years ago for the massive stack of adverts that ballooned the fishwrap from it’s normally very modest size.
Anyway, for so many of us IT weenies who were confined to the world of cubicles dodging the dodgy consultants looking to downsize us to contending with evil representatives from human resources that actually seemed to revel in cat-like behaviours of playing with their prey and outwitting/outlasting/outplaying our pointy-haired bosses from hell…”Dilbert” strips on our cubicle walls or computer monitor’s background (assuming the trolls in systems administration actually let us customise that background!) were a small but tangible bit of hope that someone out there truly understood our plight.
Certainly, racist rants are nothing new. If anything, they’ve gotten far more prevalent over recent years thanks to national media platforms giving racist rants a platform and an audience to the often Grand Canyon-sized gap between the spewing of the rant and the appropriate consequences, especially for those who have the money to buy whatever justice or image rehabilitation might be required to mollify the axes and pitchforks crowd.
Indeed, this strip from 1994 (one of my favourites, I must confess) poked fun at just how pointless and stupid corporate “diversity training” was in the face of the corporations then doing their dead-level best to ensure that there was little to no diversity to actually be found amongst their ranks, especially the much higher compensated and self-satisfied ranks.
Back when I was a cubicle-dweller, there was still racism to be found in the corporate world and it wasn’t particularly hard to find it if you bothered to look.
There were well-known “codes” and sample candidate names that hiring managers would use to ensure that HR and/or the recruiters chose candidates that were of a particular flavour. As far as I know, they’re probably still in use to this very day because why would they change a system that allowed them to openly flout the equal-opportunity and anti-discrimination laws with ease?
You could look around you and see who was being hired and promoted and who wasn’t and draw your own conclusions as to why. Occasionally, it might well actually have something to do with merit or ability but honestly, most of the time promotions and favour came to those who either kissed ass with consummate skill or won the genetic lottery to be included in the “in” club.
I guess it’s particularly disappointing that someone who seemed to understand what real diversity entailed, whether it be of colour/ethnicity or gender (Alice often being one of the smartest characters in the strip even if she was prone to the “fist of death”) or thought couldn’t be bothered to remember his primary guiding principle for the hypothetical ideal company “OA5” (for “Out at Five”) he postulated in his book “The Dilbert Principle”:
Eliminate the assholes.
He pointed out that often assholes have skills the company desperately needs and that’s why they’re often tolerated in corporate life but Adams pointed out that the trade-off against morale to keep the assholes was never worth it in the long-run. Whatever the assholes know, someone else can learn and then the assholes are expendable. And the day that happens, morale goes through the roof when everyone’s giving them the Vir Cotto wave and smile as they’re frog-marched out the door.
Being an asshole is something that transcends race, ethnicity, gender, orientation…you name it.
The choices are simple and mutually-exclusive: a person can choose to be an asshole or choose to not be an asshole.
Had he couched his arguments in terms of that simple premise and left out the racism/prejudice angle entirely, I dare say we would not be watching the utter destruction of his reputation that he’s brought upon himself that we’re seeing now.
But he took it that one step *WAY* too far over the line when he’s outright saying who he thinks are assholes that he wants nothing to do with as a group which is never a good idea.
And that was with me trying to make allowances for the natural tendency of comedians and comics to intentionally push the boundaries to try to make their point in a way that can’t be avoided or ignored. Comedians will often say the things the rest of us may be thinking with the idea that maybe we can learn some important lessons and self-awareness in the face of discomfort or absurdity.
This was not one of those times and I have a hard time seeing Scott Adams having any way to rehabilitate his character after that unprovoked racist rant. There’s no misinterpreting or “taking it out of context”…the context was crystal clear as was the meaning.
That would be bad enough but he’s since doubled down on his views in subsequent tweets whilst bemoaning the flaming ruins that was his “Dilbert” empire that he accuses the “woke” crowd of “cancelling”.
Perhaps he might want to start working on rehabilitating and eliminating the asshole in his own mirror before trying to dictate to others, eh?
The “woke” crowd didn’t put a gun to his head to force him to make those appalling statements, much less double down upon them.
The “woke” crowd isn’t the ones actually dropping “Dilbert” from syndication.
The consequences of *HIS* actions did.
The sooner Scott Adams truly accepts that fact in his heart and actually re-evaluates and changes those horrific racist views, the sooner he might have a chance at healing the divisions that he has caused with thoughtless and hurtful actions and once again give us something to laugh with rather than at.