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‘Dilbert’ newspaper flap brings renewed focus on cartoonist Scott Adams’ many controversies

New York Daily News
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Sep 24, 2022 at 7:15 am


...The papers that cut ties with Dilbert are owned by Lee Enterprises, which revamped its funny pages in print and did away with numerous comic strips. Adams didn’t address how the move would impact Dilbert’s presence online.

In an interview with Fox News, Adams said he was not told why “Dilbert” was one of the comic strips Lee Enterprises chose to get the old heave-ho, but didn’t rule out the possibility it was politically motivated. He said his objective was to humorously document how office workers deal with rules to promote workplace equity.

“That’s enough to make people think that I must be taking sides politically,” Adams said.

While Adams didn’t indicate that he was a victim of “cancel culture,” that was the conclusion reached by a lot of his fans. Others complained about a non-specific “they” who were responsible for “Dilbert” appearing in fewer papers, while some of Adams’ Twitter followers somehow saw a paper’s decision not to print something as a First Amendment issue.

Critics noted the changes by Lee Enterprises impacted several comic strips with no apparent political undertones and accused right-wingers loyal to “Dilbert” of using his “cancelled” announcement to advance an unrelated agenda.

Lee Enterprises vice president of local news Jason Adrians confirmed to the Daily News that the company’s print publications pull content from a larger online library that includes more than 500 comics and puzzles from which the publisher has to choose for print.

“That means that our print readers have a reliable slate of excellent comics that range from newer to classic, and our digital readers have an entire library of comics to peruse every day,” he said in a statement.

He apologized to readers who were upset by changes to their local papers, some of whom have complained about shrinking funny pages.

Adams did not return a Daily News request for comment.

The cartoonist has a long history of creating controversies and making provocative comments.

In 2019, following a deadly shooting at a festival in Gilroy, Calif., Adams took to Twitter to promote his app WhenHub (he later apologized). He has also pondered the accuracy of the Holocaust death toll and suggested that teen boys are driven to violence by a lack of sex.

In 2020, reflecting on the cancellation of the TV adaptation of “Dilbert” decades earlier, he tweeted “I lost my TV show for being white.”

Adams claimed that wasn’t the first time he suspects being white worked against him professionally. He has also joked on Twitter that he was going to “self-identify as a Black woman” so that he’d be considered for the Supreme Court.