Hundreds of American newspapers cancel the comic strip ‘Dilbert’ for its author’s racist comments

Readers of the otherwise somewhat anachronistic comic strip section of The Washington Post As of this Sunday, they will miss two of their most familiar presences: that of the perplexed office worker Dilbert and his dog. The newspaper has decided to cancel the contract it had with its creator, cartoonist Scott Adams, due to comments broadcast live on YouTube last Wednesday, in which Adams said that the black community in the United States forms “a hate group” and that the whites would do better to “get away from them”.

The Washington Post You are not alone in your decision. It has also been adopted by hundreds of other newspapers in which they published Dilbert, from Los Angeles Times until the Cleveland Plain Dealerin addition to the newspapers, about 200, which are still part of the Garnett communication group, publisher of the usa today and small and medium headers throughout the country. The list includes media such as the Cincinnati Enquirer, he Detroit Free Presshe Indianapolis Star, he Austin American Statesman or the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Adams, 65, created the strip in 1989, set in an indeterminate office, a dystopian setting for the ideological tribulations of what they call Corporate America.

The cartoonist was apparently aware of the consequences that his words could have on him. The reporters of the post Those who handled the news of his dismissal asked him on Saturday how many newspapers Dilbert published in, to which Adams replied. “By the time Monday comes [por mañana], plus or minus zero. In good times, the answer to that question would have been: “about two thousand headers.”

In another live broadcast on Saturday, Adams predicted that “most” of his income “will be gone by next week.” “My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this, right? There’s no way you can go back after something like that.”

“With Dilbert, Adams elevated the nerd from manual to the category of absolute protagonist of the alienation that defines the cubicle of an immense office”, explained this Sunday the professor of the University of Valencia Álvaro Pons, one of the great experts in comics in Spain, the country in which the strip It was disseminated in the 1990s in some local media. “A decade before [la serie] The office, Dilbert became a phenomenon that took advantage of the emerging possibilities of the Internet, of those pioneering Usenet news that preceded social networks, to go far beyond the impact in the press and become a benchmark for the emerging group of professionals in new technologies. He and his megalomaniac dog Dogbert filled the employees’ blackboards with a clever irony that quickly deflated, turned into a greased money-making machine for merchandising”.

The decision to dispense with the creator’s services was made by the Washington newspaper on Saturday, and was justified by a spokesman for the company, owned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, “in light of recent statements that promote segregation.” The order was immediate, which did not prevent a last one from slipping into some copies of the print edition on Sunday, until further notice, dilbert. On the website of the postthe curmudgeon office worker has completely disappeared.