Your Help Is Not Needed

By now, everyone has probably heard about Scott Adams's racist screed and how various newspapers finally deciding to pull his boring "Dilbert" cartoon from their pages.

I was a fan several decades ago: I used to have at least one book, and even made a hard drive icon in the shape of Dogbert. I don't remember how many years ago I stopped reading it, or exactly why. Maybe it was the sexism that finally got me.

I'm not sure if Adams was always the way he has shown himself to be over the past number of years, as seen on social media, but this Ruben Bolling cartoon portrays what the subtext has been:

(Click either comic to enlarge for better viewing.)

Tom Tomorrow resurrected one of his cartoons from 1996 to send out on his Sparky's List email, which pointed out that "Dilbert," almost 30 years ago, was only pretend-subversive:

Of all the racist stuff in Adams's most recent rant — yes, he's had others, just not so well-publicized — the part that made me roll my eyes the most was when he said, "I’m going to back off from being helpful to Black America, because it doesn’t seem like it pays off."

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Black people, hearing that, would look under their seats to see when Scott Adams has ever been helpful to Black America (or thought to themselves, What does it even mean for one person, no matter how rich, to be helpful to some monolith called "Black America"?).

And don't forget, on top of all that, his work is boring and repetitive, too!