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Post by Batflunkie on Feb 27, 2023 14:44:32 GMT -5
None of them is as fundamentally shocking to me as Orson Scott Card being a raging homophobe, though. I know I've said this on this board and elsewhere before, but my brain just short circuits. I cannot understand how the same person who had the capacity to understand empathy well enough to write "Ender's Game" could hold bigoted views toward a group. I know that there are always a few bad apples in the bunch but Card made me feel really ashamed to be Mormon when I was still actively attending church
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Post by impulse on Feb 27, 2023 15:09:51 GMT -5
I can only imagine. I'm not Mormon, but I was a fan of quite a lot of his books. It was a major disappointment.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2023 16:19:04 GMT -5
This is not the first kerfuffle Adams has had. There was another controversy a couple years back that had some papers temporarily dropping Dilbert because he snuck some hateful easter eggs or some such in the strip. Adams apologized and promised not to do anything like that again and the papers reinstated the strip, so this was really strike 2 for him, not strike one.
-M
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Post by impulse on Feb 27, 2023 16:54:00 GMT -5
Wow. I believe you, but I totally missed that.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2023 17:04:53 GMT -5
Wow. I believe you, but I totally missed that. I missed it when it happened, but one of the editors in one of the papers that dropped Dilbert outlines the situation in an editorial to his readers why he chose to drop the strip. He had contacted Adams personally last time it happened, when he dropped the strip then and reinstated it when he got personal assurances from Adams himself, and then this happened. The editorial is online somewhere (I think I saw it in either my twitter feed or in my googlenews feed, I can't remember which. -M
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 27, 2023 22:05:17 GMT -5
It is entirely possible that there is a mental health element that has grown in recent years, vs past. He has always been known for being a bit odd, even for a cartoonist; but, maybe some of his "issues" have grown worse. Dave Sim started out tilting at Corporate Comic Windmills, then ended up ranting against women, Lefties and others, as time wore on. Might be a similar path for Adams.
I deliberately avoided Corporate Culture as I spent enough time in an office, in the military and found it to be mentally numbing. That said, working in retail has me on the receiving end of corporate management cowardice and insanity. The military version had its problems; but, at the heart of things, you had a group of people who did their job because lives depended on it and you developed leaders. As such, the strip never hit home, for me.
I always considered This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow, as sharper satire, though it kind of evolved from office culture to consumer culture to socio-political topics.
Adams isn't the first cartoonist to spout abhorrent or just controversial statements or ideas, let alone racist or ignorant imagery and ideas, in comic strips. Racial caricatures abounded for decades, gender stereotypes were common as of 20 years ago, minority representation has always been lacking. Some creators, like Harold Gray, of Little Orphan Annie, used their strip to push their own political agenda, as he was a major conservative who used his strip to denigrate things like unions, the Roosevelt government and any kind of government assistance to anyone other than Big Business as a handout unearned. He made a hero out of a war profiteer, while calling him such in his name. However, in those days, you had more newspapers in markets, so there were always opposing viewpoints to such things and those papers wouldn't carry the strip. Al Cap became infamous in the 60s, with increasingly nasty attacks on peace protesters and others. Doonesbury was always controversial, as it represented a very specific point of view, at the start, though Trudeau proved to be an equal opportunity offender, as he satirized and criticized both Democratic and Republican Administrations. It's just that some presidents made his job that much easier. Funny enough, his Gulf War strips earned him a lot of fans, in the military, with BD called up to active duty in the Gulf, as well as his wounding and recovery.
Like I say, Dilbert was never a personal experience for me, nor one I found particularly funny (occasionally, but not regularly) and I did not rate Adams' artwork, such as it was, very highly. So, I won't miss it. I did find his statements about loss of income a bit disingenuous. Yes, he loses significant income, with the syndicate dropping him; but, he is one of the millionaire comic strip creators, with the books and merchandising earning him several fortunes, in just royalties. I was under the impression that he at least owned a piece of the strip, which meant that he was getting more than just the cartoonist's haul of things. Even so, he was earning more than, say, Lynn Johnston, for a long time. Thus, if he is in serious financial straits, its because he has squandered all of that money or is living a pretty hefty lifestyle. He still has outlets that can earn him money, though his audience is likely to be significantly smaller. You reap what you sow.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2023 23:45:37 GMT -5
Seems Mr. Dilbert Adams is doubling down now that he's been dropped by the syndicate after trying to deny he said the things he did on video previously while trying to save his buttocks... He cannot disappear into irrelevance soon enough. -M
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Post by impulse on Feb 28, 2023 9:59:53 GMT -5
I've wondered more than once if any of these creators who seemingly jumped off the deep end should get screened for a brain tumor or new mental illness or something.
And not surprisingly he attempts to conflate "free speech" with "saying anything I want without any blowback."
The government isn't preventing you from saying what you want, buddy. This is regular old, vanilla capitalism at work. You're becoming a liability to companies' bottom lines, so they're cutting rope.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2023 10:25:53 GMT -5
I've wondered more than once if any of these creators who seemingly jumped off the deep end should get screened for a brain tumor or new mental illness or something. And of course, not surprisingly he of course attempts to conflate "free speech" with "saying anything I want without any blowback." The government isn't preventing you from saying what you want, buddy. This is regular, old, vanilla capitalism at work. You're becoming a liability to company's bottom lines, so they're cutting rope. Around the time of his first kerfluffle, Adams got into a twitter feud with comic artist Bill Sienkewicz who had called Adams out on some of the hateful content in his strips, and the two got into. Sienkewicz asked him if they could put aside their differences and non-productive exchange and instead do a charity draw off and let fans/voters decide, with all proceeds form it going to charity. Adams response was to block Sienkewicz on all social media platforms. So the recent events are not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Adams the past few years (the fact so many people are surprised leads one to believe not many people were paying attention to him). -M
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 28, 2023 11:03:23 GMT -5
Around the time of his first kerfluffle, Adams got into a twitter feud with comic artist Bill Sienkewicz who had called Adams out on some of the hateful content in his strips, and the two got into. Sienkewicz asked him if they could put aside their differences and non-productive exchange and instead do a charity draw off and let fans/voters decide, with all proceeds form it going to charity. Adams response was to block Sienkewicz on all social media platforms. So the recent events are not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Adams the past few years (the fact so many people are surprised leads one to believe not many people were paying attention to him). Yeah, it seems like anytime Adams opened his mouth/tweeted over roughly the past decade, something objectionable resulted - often sexist, racist (albeit not as overtly as this recent outburst) or homophobic (more recently transphobic).
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Post by impulse on Feb 28, 2023 11:47:02 GMT -5
I generally don't pay attention to the external writings of creators, nor do I go on Twitter more than I have to. Not surprised I missed it.
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 28, 2023 12:39:07 GMT -5
I've wondered more than once if any of these creators who seemingly jumped off the deep end should get screened for a brain tumor or new mental illness or something. And of course, not surprisingly he of course attempts to conflate "free speech" with "saying anything I want without any blowback." The government isn't preventing you from saying what you want, buddy. This is regular, old, vanilla capitalism at work. You're becoming a liability to company's bottom lines, so they're cutting rope. Around the time of his first kerfluffle, Adams got into a twitter feud with comic artist Bill Sienkewicz who had called Adams out on some of the hateful content in his strips, and the two got into. Sienkewicz asked him if they could put aside their differences and non-productive exchange and instead do a charity draw off and let fans/voters decide, with all proceeds form it going to charity. Adams response was to block Sienkewicz on all social media platforms. So the recent events are not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Adams the past few years (the fact so many people are surprised leads one to believe not many people were paying attention to him). -M I didn't even know Dilbert was still running until this story popped up in my newsfeed yesterday.
Cei-U! I summon the "Huh"!
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Post by impulse on Feb 28, 2023 16:59:09 GMT -5
Around the time of his first kerfluffle, Adams got into a twitter feud with comic artist Bill Sienkewicz who had called Adams out on some of the hateful content in his strips, and the two got into. Sienkewicz asked him if they could put aside their differences and non-productive exchange and instead do a charity draw off and let fans/voters decide, with all proceeds form it going to charity. Adams response was to block Sienkewicz on all social media platforms. So the recent events are not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Adams the past few years (the fact so many people are surprised leads one to believe not many people were paying attention to him). -M I didn't even know Dilbert was still running until this story popped up in my newsfeed yesterday. Cei-U! I summon the "Huh"!
And it might not be running for much longer at this point, so if you hadn't caught this, you might have totally missed it!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2023 17:04:07 GMT -5
I didn't even know Dilbert was still running until this story popped up in my newsfeed yesterday. Cei-U! I summon the "Huh"!
And it might not be running for much longer at this point, so if you hadn't caught this, you might have totally missed it! Oh, it's not running anymore. His syndicate has severed all ties with him, strips, book collections, merchandise, etc. all gone. Adams lost millions in revenue in one fell swoop. Stuff completed in the pipeline may come out over the next week or so as newspapers reset and find replacement material, but no new material will be taken by the syndicate from him. -M edit to add-here's the statement from his syndicate...
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Post by impulse on Feb 28, 2023 17:12:20 GMT -5
Oh, wow. I don't know enough about the newspaper syndication machine. I thought a huge amount of newspapers dropped him. I didn't realize he was entirely cut loose by all of them/his publisher.
Well, all right, then.
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