A Eulogy for Scott Adams

“I have an extra Dilbert tie if any of you would like to trade.” – Mission Hill

People often hold “celebrations of life” for someone after they died.  I think that’s a shame, really.  I get it – you don’t want to hold the funeral for someone who is sitting right there.  Besides, when I die, if anyone shows up at the funeral, it will probably be to make sure I’m dead.

I’d hate to rob them of that opportunity.

However, The Mrs. indicates that eulogy is the wrong word, since tribute would be better.  I’ll contest that at least one online source that I edited indicates that a eulogy is usually for someone who recently died, so I’m technically correct, which we all know is the best kind of correct, right?

Regardless, I think it’s fitting to spend some time talking about Scott Adams since he has announced he’s dying.  Whereas with a relative it would be weird to talk about them getting ready to leap off the mortal coil while they have a heart beat and are still in the room, I think Mr. Adams might appreciate it.

One of the first Dilbert® strips.

The first time I ever saw Dilbert™ was on office samizdat.  Samizdat is the name for the literature that was copied on the sly in Russia during the Cold War.  It was literature that was politically incorrect and thus officially banned.  I’m pretty sure HR didn’t want us to see what Wile E. Coyote® really wanted to do to the Roadrunner© while we were on company time.

Certainly, Dilbert© wasn’t banned, it also wasn’t in the local newspaper.  So, we huddled around the grainy photocopied versions.  And laughed.

Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert™, and is one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.  His humor is outstanding, and his satire is still spot on.

Scott became a one-man cultural phenomenon in the late 1990s, and forged a national audience with his wit.  He had an amazing publishing career as well – he had New York Times© national bestsellers, back when that sort of thing was meaningful.

And the marketing!  Watches.  Plush toys.  Shirts.  Calendars.  You name it, if it could fit on a cubical drone’s desk, the marketing team around Mr. Adams sold it.  And then they moved on to TV, to an unfortunate network that didn’t have the audience that Scott deserved.

That was okay.  The Universe was treating Scott just fine.

Speaking of that, Scott was the first place I became familiar with affirmations.  He’d write down what his goal was 15 times each day.  And then?  His goal would be met.  I’ve even written about that here.

Now, there are two ways to look at this:  first, Mr. Adams just bent the Universe to his will, or second, the very act of creating the affirmation made him look at the world and look for places where he could bring his goal into existence.  Regardless, like most things, it worked out pretty well for him:  I imagine that the last time he had money issues was back in 1997, and that’s a pretty good run.

Does that mean he always won?  No.  Very few people remember (thankfully) the Dilberito© which I believe was judged to be a war crime when they tried to feed the remaining stock to the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

But that was just his first act.  His second was more profound.  Having had success with the media, he moved on to philosophy, and his biggest book along that line is probably How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big, which I’ve written about as well.  Great ideas, and presented well.

In the mid-2010s, he moved into P&P:  podcasting and politics.  His prediction of Donald Trump’s victory was early, and his support of Donald Trump cost Mr. Adams a lot of money.  I’m not sure he cared, since by that time he had multi-generational FU money.

The phrase “Fine People Hoax”?  That’s the work of Mr. Adams.

I was a regular listener of Mr. Adams podcasts.  I missed his blog, which I enjoyed more, but his podcasting style was engaging as well.  Coffee with Scott Adams was a regular for me when I used to hit the gym at lunch, and became a once in a while treat for those days I had road miles ahead of me for work.  Since 2021, not so much, but mainly due to time constraints.

What I enjoyed the most about Adams was his ability to consistently look at the world from multiple viewpoints, and set up different frames of reference.  Some of them had already occurred to me, but many hadn’t.  For a person who likes ideas as much as I do, it was always fun to get a fresh perspective so different from the rest of the world.

Was he always right?

Certainly not.  His predictions about the Vaxx™ were quite off, but to be fair, he did admit that he had been wrong when evidence proved that to be the case.  It wasn’t personal.  It was factual.

Then, there was his third act, which I’m betting happened around the time he knew his days were numbered in triple digits counting downwards.  That is, of course, on his Coffee with Scott Adams podcast on February 22, 2023 when Adams discussed the result of a survey where many black Americans indicated that they didn’t like white people so much.  Adams famously stated:  “If nearly half of all blacks are not ok with white people, that’s a hate group, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”

People called that racist.  The backlash was immediate.  His comic strip was cancelled.  His books were cancelled and the rights reverted to him.  All of the merch?  Cancelled.

(FYI, if you try to buy his stuff “new” on Amazon™ today, it’s almost certain that it is being sold by vultures who are selling unauthorized versions.)

Result?  He could draw what he wanted to draw.

Dilbert® Reborn™

I am certain that Mr. Adams knew what he was doing, and, oddly, that just might be saving black Americans.  Mr. Adams had always been very accommodating and supportive of black American.  I think, however, post George Floyd, he realized what was happening, and realized a reckoning against black Americans was rapidly coming.

By taking the bold step to criticize black opinion about whites at a time when whites had just had the biggest outpouring of sympathy in history towards blacks, he was signaling to blacks:  you can’t act like violent, entitled, spoiled people, nor can you support your racial brethren when they act like that.

Even now, the backlash against the worst of black behavior is growing due to the ubiquity of body cams and uncensored streams.

And that’s okay, because the behavior has to change.  I’m pretty sure that everyone, even blacks, are tired of the nonsense.

Yet, the narrative since 1965 has been “there must be a cause and we have to fix the cause and everything will be fine.”  That’s been sixty years.  If the root cause hasn’t been fixed over three generations, it hasn’t been found or the actions to fix it have made it worse.

And absolutely no one in the mainstream would admit it or even talk about it.

Until Adams spoke.

Now?

There is a realization that behavior simply has to stop.  People don’t care why anymore.  It’s not about root causes, it’s about swift, certain, and severe justice and the outrage when that’s short-circuited.

The irony is that with comments that got Adams cancelled as a racist, he may have saved many blacks.

It’s too early to tell.  The backlash is large, and growing, and people are talking about it in the open, which in the end is the only way to solve a problem.  You don’t solve the problems of an alcoholic by getting them more vodka, and you don’t solve the problems of a brat by giving in to them when they throw an antisocial tantrum.

And if you subsidize poverty and single motherhood, you just get more of it.

Does he have another act?

Does he need one?  He has entertained, he has been a fountain of ideas, and he has helped shape what is perhaps the most crucial social narrative of our time in the most crucial manner.

Regardless, Mr. Adams has my respect, and I wish him the very best in his last days.  If he reads this, I hope that he knows that I am certainly celebrating his life.

He will be missed.