Wall of Text: Fallen Heroes

WALL OF TEXT: FALLEN HEROES. Well, Scott Adams outed himself as blatantly racist. Some of his words and choices in the past had been questionable, but this was just coming right out and saying it. I watched the video, just to hear what he said in context. Since 2015 I figured he was just tone-deaf, but no ambiguity now. 1000 people responded to a poll, so now he felt justified saying half of black people just hate whites, so there’s no point being nice to them, white people get the hell away from for your own safety. No word on how many people of each demographic the pollsters asked, so we don’t know ratios [update]. Only that it was 1,000 people. Hardly a representative snapshot of the USA, but that’s all it took to give Adams permission to call African Americans a hate group that doesn’t think being white is acceptable. The rest of his rant was pretty much Ayn Rand: we live in an equal society, everyone can get out of poverty, you just have to commit to education and work hard and you’ll get out. Anyone who is still in poverty or a crap job simply refuses to work hard and is unworthy of help, so Adams is done helping this hate group because no matter how much he does to help black people, they hate him—nay, they are racist against him, so white people should just stay away. I adhere to the belief that not all Trump supporters are racist, but I’ve been proven wrong so many times, so now I’m just going to stay away from anyone who supports Trump. No other qualifications needed. Incidentally, this polling website is far right. Rasmussen Reports. One of the links takes me to a page named “Daily Presidential Tracking Poll” sponsored by Matt Palumbo’s MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN. The book’s subtitle is: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros. That’s what we’re dealing with. Antisemitism. Probably not too much longer before Adams says something along those lines, as well. Newspapers and his syndicate dropping him are already being used to justify further perceptions of prejudice against whites. Not being free to be racist in public is a form of oppression. Screw him. I liked Dilbert in 90s and 2000s, but I lost interest when it became a perpetual motion machine. I think it’s important to remember that this is not cancellation. This is a case of someone saying something shitty in public, and then other people reacting to it. It’s not censorship. Refusing to do business with someone who says such things is not a violation of free speech or something—you’ve had your say, so now others get to react to it. That’s something that has happened since forever; we’re just seeing it in realtime now. While I didn’t consider Scott Adams one of my heroes, I did kind of look up to him. When I was younger, I wanted to be a cartoonist and draw the next Garfield. Seeing Adams’ comic strip get picked up, and how good writing can make up for “limited” artistry, gave me hope. I got into Dilbert because it does such a good job creating its own world with its own sense of logic. One need not work in an office to understand its humor, and I was drawn to that as a teenager. Learning computer programming also helped me identify with it, as it was easy to imagine that being me someday. I even bought a couple of his nonfiction books (God’s Debris, The Religion War) and thought of him as a great thinker even if he was kinda stuck doing comic strips. Yes, I saw myself in that. I still respect him as a writer for his ability to create such a world and draw me into it, even though I cannot abide his views personally anymore. So how do fans move on after they have been completely put off by the creator of something they enjoy and respect? Some fans of J. K. Rowling feel the same sense of dissonance. They enjoy what she created, but can’t agree with her personally. The best advice I have is not to let someone else’s work define you. I’m not embarrassed for liking Dilbert years ago, just as I am not embarrassed for playing Earthworm Jim or the Neverhood. Dilbert is a good comic that manages to create its own world with its own internal logic anyone can appreciate even if they don’t work in an office. Earthworm Jim 1+2 are outstanding games that stand the test of time, even if their creator has drifted so far to the right you could not pretend to get along with him at a family reunion. We used to be cordial to people who didn’t hold our political beliefs, but now such beliefs have shifted from merely being about fiscal responsibility to whether or not this group of people should exist. It’s a vastly different landscape from what I grew up in, and we have yet to reach its climax. You don’t have to agree with a creator’s views to understand and appreciate their work. I certainly don’t agree with the message of Metropolis, but I recognize it meant something at the time, and it may have been meaningful for the creator. It’s a good movie on its own. It’s a good book on it own. I don’t agree with the original story of Aladdin, but I recognize what it meant for its time. Perhaps someday the work of Scott Adams and JK Rowling and Doug TenNapel and many others will stand on their own apart from their respective creators, but we are not there yet. If money equals votes, then I will not buy anything that benefits them if I can help it. I will wait for hindsight.