Anyone who has or has had a difficult job, or worked in
a difficult workplace, or had a difficult boss were big fans
of Adams and his comic strip character Dilbert, the very
intelligent and taken for granted engineer who is bedeviled
by a mean-spirited, stultifyingly stupid, self-serving boss
and by various dopey co-workers, whose ideas are ignored
or set aside and forgotten about after he presents them at
departmental meetings, and is often assigned by his buffoon-
ish boss to perform tasks which are worthy of a clerk or some
other low-ranking staff member rather than a sharp, smart
engineer, all while occupying a cubicle in the middle of all
this comedic hurly-burly. As one who has gone through much
of the same soul-sucking, gut-grinding, dignity-draining
workplace indignations as the fictional hero of the downtrodden
employee which Adams brought to life had faced, your favorite
Peasant also revered both the put-upon cartoon engineer and his
creator.
Dilbert was chiefly a comic strip which made mirthful fun of
the corporate world and how office life can descend into the
ridiculous, the banal, the mind-bending, the ego-feeding, and
the just plain dumb. Adams drew in a satirical way the
social and psychological nomenclature of offices and the white-
collar employees who toiled in them, and also wrote books about
same with the same sharp-humored thrusts. Adams also had plenty
of experiences of his own to draw from, working in offices and
going through the rigmarol.
Adams also did commentary on politics and events, writing and
speaking from a libertarian perspective. He got into trouble
when he said, on his livestream show Real Coffee With Scott Adams
in reaction to a poll which asked if respondents agreed that "it's OK
to be white, a phrase labeled as racist by the Anti-Defamation League,
with 26% of black respondents and 21% were not sure, that blacks
were a "hate group" and that "the best advice I could give to white
people is to get the hell away from black people, just get the f***
away". In response to Adams' remarks, many newspapers across the
country promptly dropped his comic strip Adams defended his words
as hyperbole and as taken out of context in reportage, disavowing
racism and stated that nobody would disagree with what he said were
his main points.
Several months earlier Adams was diagnosed with prostate cancer,
which soon spread to his spine and other areas of his body. After a
painful battle bravely waged, Scott Adams finally succumbed on
January 13, aged 68. Dilbet is the biggest part of his legacy to the
world, which is hungry for good comedy, including comedy with
a satirical bite --- especially for those troubled souls trapped in their
office cubicles, trying to outmaneuver their wretched bosses and to
outwit them and their not-so-bright co-workers while trying their
damndest to get recognition for their contributions to the mission
of the company. Rest in Peace and thanks for the target-hitting humor!
MEM
