“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams has long been insensitive

Adams, who is white, was an outspoken presence on social media long before he labeled blacks a “hate group” on YouTube, and for some, “Dilbert” had moved away from his roots as a chronicler of office culture.

The editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, who dropped “Dilbert” last year, said the comic went “from hilarious to hurtful and mean.” The Los Angeles Times, which joined dozens of other newspapers to shut down the comic after last week’s comments, had quietly replaced four of Adam’s strips last year.

“He kind of ran out of office jokes and started integrating all this other stuff so after a while it became difficult to distinguish between Scott Adams and ‘Dilbert,'” said Mike Peterson, columnist for industry blog The Daily Cartoonist.

As individual newspapers told readers they would drop “Dilbert,” the company that distributed the strip, Andrews McMeel Universal, said it would sever ties with Adams. As of Monday, “Dilbert” disappeared from the GoComics website, which also hosts many top comics such as “Peanuts” and “Calvin and Hobbes.”

Adams said Monday the strip, which first appeared in 1989, will only be available through its subscription service on the Locals platform.

“Dilbert” is practically dead, Peterson said.

Adams said on YouTube Monday that his distributor didn’t really have a choice because customers and fellow cartoonists were pissed. “They were just forced into it,” he said.

On Twitter, he said his book publisher and book agent had “cancelled” him. The Penguin Random House Imprint Portfolio said it would not release Adams’ book Reframe Your Brain in September, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Adams has long been active on Twitter, whose CEO Elon Musk was among the few to publicly support him. He also blogs regularly and regularly publishes a podcast on YouTube.

He’s garnered attention for comments he’s made in the past, including a 2011 statement that society treats women differently from children and the mentally disabled for the same reason — “it’s just easier for everyone.” He said 2016 GOP presidential nominee Carly Fiorina has an “angry wifey face.”

Adams became a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, saying Trump has a hypnotist’s ability to attract followers. He said this stance was costing him money in speaker fees.

He said he lost prime-time animated series “Dilbert,” which ran for two seasons on UPN, because he was “white” when the network decided to target black audiences, and that he lost two other corporate jobs because of his race .

On the February 22 episode of his YouTube podcast, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” he referenced a Rasmussen Reports poll asking whether people agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be white.” Most agreed, but Adams found that 26% of black respondents disagreed and others were unsure.

The Anti-Defamation League said the phrase at the center of the question was popularized as a trolling campaign by members of 4chan – a notorious anonymous message board – and adopted by some white supremacists. Rasmussen Reports is a conservative polling firm that has used its Twitter account to support false and misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines, elections and the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

Adams has repeatedly labeled people who are black as members of a “hate group” or a “racial hate group” and said he “will no longer help black Americans.” In his podcast Monday, he called his “hate group” remark “hyperbole” but continued to defend his advice that whites “get the hell away” from blacks.

In announcing that “Dilbert” would be removed from the Kansas City Star, Derek Donovan, the newspaper’s community engagement editor, said that Adam’s “antagonistic, macho childlike personality” has been a constant over the years.

“It’s not about canceling culture,” said editor Richard Green of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in California. “It does the right thing.”

The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Massachusetts, on Monday left a blank where “Dilbert” would normally run, saying it would remain so through March “as a reminder of the racism that pervades our society.”

The San Francisco Chronicle stopped publishing “Dilbert” last October — a move that drew only a handful of complaints. Editor-in-chief Emilio Garcia-Ruiz said in the paper that he objected to a strip that said straight men should pretend to be gay in an effort to diversify jobs.

In a Sept. 2 “Dilbert” strip, a boss said traditional performance appraisals would be replaced with an “alertness” score. When an employee complained that this might be subjective, the boss said, “That’ll cost you two points off your wakefulness rating, fanatic.”

In an August strip, the boss said the company was entering the “pandemic prevention market” and creating demand by unleashing a deadly virus.

A black employee featured in an October 20 strip noted that his boss ignored his actual accomplishments in order to recommend him for a job he wasn’t qualified for. The clerk backed down when told there would be a big pay jump.

Peterson said there were other examples of how Adam’s attitude replaced the snarky humor that Peterson and a legion of middle managers loved. Adams seemed to be running out of jokes.

“The strip jumped at the shark,” he said.

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