Scott Adams, R.I.P.

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