Scott Adams's long-running comic strip Dilbert has disappeared from newspapers this month, following a series of his online comments that were well across the line of acceptable discourse. I've read plenty of commentary since then, quoting long-time associates wondering what happened to him over the years that brought him to this pass. I wonder, too.
I've been a fan of Dilbert since the early 90s. He portrayed with brilliance and dark-but-gentle humor what workplaces can turn us into, with all its pressure and frustration and supervision and sometimes even fear. The tech office where he set the strip seemed familiar to me, even though my career is in a very different field, and I've never worked in a cubicle. He understood us. In the first strip I clipped from the Chicago Tribune back in 1992, Dilbert shouts "Yes!" practicing, he says, in case anything good happens to him. When he adds a dance move, he falls out of the window.
Everyone was the butt of the joke at one point or other, but the authority figures got most of it. Adams was punching up.
Like J.K. Rowling, Adams has been justly celebrated for his exceptional body of work (including a Pulitzer Prize in 1998). Also like Rowling, he's been justly condemned for a series of recent comments, mostly about race for Adams, which have nothing to do with that body of work. And were quite plainly punching down instead of up.
I wonder if all the praise went to their heads, and they fancied themselves experts on everything. Or maybe they weren't ready for the attention their random thoughts got?
Our common life benefits from artistic excellence. And it benefits from freedom of speech. But we maintain community by remembering, as Paul wrote, that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). A common life also requires listening--reading Adams's comments makes me wonder if he ever has talked with a black American--and humility before we speak. That must be especially hard to remember when people are lionized. I can see why the ancient Greeks used to banish people who got too famous!
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