I was a subscriber to his Dilbert newsletter back when he first started publishing it before his blog - 15 years ago? 20? It was really good with funny tales of “in-duh-viduals” and stories from readers about workplace stupidity. But after a few years, it seemed like each newsletter was less stories from the wild, and more self-aggrandizing. It wasn’t marketing his books/calendars/etc. (he’d always done that); it was stuff about how much smarter he was than everyone else. I finally got sick of it and unsubscribed. This was way before he got into all the MRA bullshit.
I might not agree with his Republican views, but I don’t have a problem with him for taking that side (at least before Trump). It was his extreme narcissism and disgusting MRA views that turned me off, and that’s not something recent.
I know. That’s why I asked about book sales specifically – I suspect his wingnuttery (despite his “disclaimers”) has also cost him a significant drop in sales, but I’m not sure.
From my original post, a direct quote from one of Scott Adam’s blog posts…
“Democrats generally use guns to commit crimes. Republican use guns for sport and for self-defense.”
I don’t read his blog, and see the comic only once in a while (in recent years). The theory that he’s freaked out by darker-skinned people is rooted in several observations, among them:
[ul]
[li]As far as I know the Dilbert strip has only one Indian-American character and no black characters (but as I say, my knowledge may be out of date). That’s not proof of racism, but might reasonably be inferred to indicate a lack of comfort with non-whites.[/li]
[li]He’s on record as defending a GOP official who had emailed an image of Obama as a chimp; the relevant blog is quoted here: http://www.politisink.com/2011/04/scott-adams-melts-down-all-over-the-internet/[/li]
[li]Most of all: he is working just as hard as he can to get Donald “stop-and-frisk/judges with Mexican parents can’t be fair/‘C’ for Colored on the rental application” Trump elected President. (And as has been cited, Adams has been stumping for GOP candidates, with all their dog-whistling, for a while.)[/li][/ul]
I would guess that Adams has some racist views. Can’t prove it without some good brain science, I guess, but it does seem to be a possibility.
(By the way, the article at that link cites quite a few examples of Adams trying to put across the idea that failing to buy his merch and support his comic strip is a VERY, VERY bad thing. So that seems to be a well-known theme for Adams.)
If not racist views, he certainly has white victim complex. From here:
[QUOTE=Scott Adams]
My boss informed me that there wasn’t enough gender and ethnic diversity in management and so there was no hope for a white male like me to get promoted in the foreseeable future. So I looked for another job and left. I didn’t stay and fight for my rights for the simple reason that the fight was, in my opinion, unwinnable. I had a chance of winning the indoor smoking fight. I didn’t feel there was any realistic chance to win the promotion fight as long as diversity was the headline of the era.
…
I hit the diversity ceiling again. My boss told me in direct language that a white male could not be promoted into their all-white-guy management ranks because now the public was watching. But I didn’t stay and fight the system because I didn’t think it was winnable.
[/QUOTE]
ETA: and that entire post is a disgusting turd. Tl;DR: women getting harassed on the street is their own fault for thanking men for compliments; the only solution is to reject all compliments.
This–Adams’ boss telling him white males had no chance to rise–must have been quite a few years ago. And so, today, of course, we see a Fortune 500 whose chief officers and managers are all either female or non-white or both!
Adams is basically as narcissistic as Trump, and thus finds him appealing. His ideas were always rather proto-Trump, with the sexist/racist bullshit, and so he’s basically followed Trump even more. He may even count as part of the alt-right that Trump activated.
As I’m fond of pointing out, he’s a pointy-eared boss who thinks he’s a Dilbert. (And now I can’t even remember who first came up with that.)
He started Dilbert in 1980, so these incidents had to be in the '70s. If he couldn’t get promoted as a white male back then, I’m guessing it wasn’t the color of his skin or gender that was the issue.
I honestly think some of the positions that Adams seems to advocate are straight up trolling. He obviously has some not-so-subtly hidden agenda, but he also seems to like stirring the pot, or seeing how far his leet master persuader skills can take him.
It is 1989. Wikipedia has a typo or is just plain incorrect. See here. If you follow the citation, it goes to a 1989 comic strip, for April 16, 1989, not April 1, 1980 as in the main body of the article.
ETA: And ninja’d again today. Gotta get faster fingers.
What’s up with his claim of having tweets shadow banned? If he wanted to maintain a lie I suppose he could but it’s certainly easy to check otherwise. Has he ever pointed to specific tweets that were hidden?
Eh, it is possible. I lost a job opportunity that I was to final interview for in the late 80’s because they decided they needed to hire a minority. Yes, that’s exactly what they told me when they cancelled the interview. A company I worked for in roughly 1990 got rid of all six male IT managers and replaced every single one of them with women - all from inside the division. Companies did things like that back in the 80’s and early 90’s.
That being said, none of that scarred me for life or made me hate women or minorities. Of course, I wasn’t racist or misogynist to begin with, so there wasn’t this great “but I’m the WHITE MAN, I should get this job!” inside of me to get hurt and sulk about it for 30 years.
On that note: there’s no way that anyone who writes crap like that can be described as a progressive. I mean… men make cat-calls because they are rewarded by WOMEN for that behavior? Words fail me.
The thing is I wonder how many people who read his strip and buy his merchandise know he is a wingnut? Or more charitably than he perhaps deserves - that he comes off as a wingnut :D.
I wasn’t aware of it until these recent threads and I don’t think I normally have my head in a hole. I just don’t know much about the political musings of most cartoonists ( I can think of 3 or 4 exceptions ). I have to wonder if I’m an outlier.
I saw an article trending on Facebook today that said something like “15k views” describing how “Dilbert creator says ISIS wants Hillary Clinton elected,” so I think perhaps his views are becoming more widely known now.
He’s not a good cartoonist. He still draws an ugly minimalist style, only slightly refined from his early days. He has exactly three jokes; clueless pointy-haired boss who doesn’t understand his job, nasty, (heh), manipulating women to emasculate the already ball-less, and corporate culture that emasculates the already…, wait, make that two jokes. Adams is Dilbert in form, function and general repressed anger. And, I would wager that he hasn’t been laid over the exact amount of time that Dilbert hasn’t been laid. Full disclosure: when I was still in the corporate world, I was Wally. Pardon me, my coffee is getting cold.