The term "cancel culture" is filled with emotion. Some people lament it as being too quick to ruin someone’s existence, and others praise it for ridding the world of hateful people. No matter where you stand on the issue, we all can agree that actions should have consequences. Cartoonist and Dilbert creator Scott Adams is learning this the hard way.
The comic strip Dilbert has been pulled from multiple papers across the United States after Adams' racist comments on his YouTube show. It will no longer appear in The Washington Post, USA Today's papers, The Los Angeles Times, Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, and more.
The trouble began when Scott was discussing a recent Rasmussen poll on his YouTube show Real Coffee With Scott Adams. The poll questioned Black Americans on the statement, "It's OK to be white.” In response, 53% agreed, 26% disagreed, and 21% stated they were not sure.
"If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people … that's a hate group," Adams stated. "I don't want to have anything to do with them. And 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 … because there is no fixing this."
Adams doubled down on his hateful rhetoric. "I'm also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens," he added. He accused Black people of not “focusing on education.”
As a result of these statements, The Washington Post received multiple reader complaints. It decided the right thing to do was to pull the long-running comic strip from the publication.
"In light of Scott Adams's recent statements promoting segregation, the Washington Post has ceased publication of the Dilbert comic strip,” stated a representative of the organization. This will take effect after this Sunday’s edition because it had already gone to print.
Adams reacted to this news in a text message to the Post. He misguidedly stands behind his original comments. "Lots of people are angry, but I haven't seen any disagreement yet, at least not from anyone who saw the context. Some questioned the poll data. That's fair,” his text read.
Adams even seemed to understand that his words would negatively impact his career and reputation but perplexingly still said them. "Most of my income will be gone by next week. My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this, am I right? There's no way you can come back from this,” he said on his show.
Dilbert tells the tale of its title character, who works in a dystopian office with an awful boss and a talking dog. It was first published in 1989 and at one time appeared in over 2,000 newspapers. In 1998, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for his work on the comic strip. There was even a short-lived UPN show based on the comic in 1999.
Adams tweeted that he was going to "self-identify as a Black woman." In May 2022 he added a character to the comic named Dave the Black Engineer whose dramatic function was to mock diversity.
