Dilbert has been canceled by more than seventy-seven newspapers after the comic strip’s creator, Scott Adams, began making the iconic cartoon political. In a series of anti-woke plotlines, Adams took aim at America’s liberal and progressive agenda by making fun of all the progress people are looking to make in recent years – including the writing of one Black character who refuses to admit their race and identifies as white instead.
Over the last few decades, Dilbert has been a beloved comic strip. But after the creator turned it into a political tool, its days may be numbered. The cartoon first poked fun at corporate life and office workers in 1989.
Adams’s recent announcement of his pro-conservative and anti-progressive jokes led to him losing a contract with Lee Enterprises. Lee Enterprises is a massive media company that owns about one hundred newspapers all across the United States, including influential papers such as Buffalo News, the Arizona Daily Sun, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Although Adams’s jokes about corporate America have been published by Lee enterprises for years, the comic strip’s anti-woke agenda was too sensitive an issue for the publishing conglomerate.
Recently, in a cartoon strip that raised quite a few eyebrows, a black character who identifies as white was asked by his company to also identify as gay in order to help improve the company’s environmental, social, and governance ratings.
The Black character says they can do it but with a caveat, “Depends how hard you want me to sell it.” The anti-woke agenda boss replies with what seems like an insensitive statement, “Just wear better shirts.”
Adams, who is worth an estimated $70 million, may not be affected by the withdrawal of publishers. His Dilbert company has paid him millions of dollars, but he also participates in other projects.
Adams spoke to Fox News after losing his contract with Lee Enterprises. He told the entertainment news channel that he had heard numerous complaints about Dilbert being a racist cartoon, but could not say for sure if this was the reason why he lost his contract.
Adams stated: “It was part of a larger overhaul, I believe, of comics, but why they decided what was in and what was out, that’s not known to anybody except them, I guess.”
Other cartoons such as Baby Blues, Red and Rover, Mutts, and Bizarro were also deleted from the paper corporation. Dan Piraro, the creator of Bizarro, discussed his termination in an interview.
“Lee Enterprises, a newspaper group that is majority-owned by a large investment firm, stopped running ‘Bizarro’ and many other comics in their papers this past week,” Piraro said.
Adams stated, “Do you think they flipped coins to decide what to keep and what to delete? It wasn’t about popularity or cost. (That I know.) But it could have been a normal business decision of another type. That is a huge coincidence. All possible.”
