The saga of the comic strip “Dilbert” and the racist rants of its creator, Scott Adams, isn’t the out-of-control cancel culture that Twitter boss Elon Musk and others on the right claim. It’s actually an example of the free market in action — the free market of newspapers responding to readers who are appalled at Adams’ outspoken racism. Adams has the right to those views, but no newspaper or reader has an obligation to support them with attention and money.
Adams has promoted Trumpian conspiracy theories for a while now, but last week he crossed a bright new line into overt racism. Adams’ popular comic strip about a dysfunctional office is biting in its treatment of a supervisor portrayed as ignorant, tone-deaf and cruel to those around him — which aptly describes Adams’ own behavior during a livestreaming YouTube show last week.
“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people … that’s a hate group,” he said, citing the dubious results of an unscientific opinion poll. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them … the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people.”
