Labor unions haven’t adopted Dilbert characters as insignia. But corporations in droves have rushed to link themselves with Dilbert. Why? Dilbert mirrors the mass media’s crocodile tears for working people...-Norman Solomon

Is there anyone out there who still remembers Lil’ Abner? Created by cartoonist Al Capp, the comic strip ran for over forty years in newspapers across the US. But Capp’s increasingly strident right-wing politics and multiple accusations of sexual harassment and assault have overshadowed whatever talents he displayed in his artwork.

Whether the same fate will befall Dilbert creator Scott Adams remains to be seen. After his attempts to treat his prostate cancer with horse dewormers ivermectin and fenbendazole failed, Adams reached out to President Trump (whom Adams had long supported) and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fast-track a medical procedure. It brings me little pleasure to note that Adams cheered on the misnamed Department of Government of Efficiency as they made cuts to cancer research. Regardless of any connections to the powers that be, Adams died of cancer on January 13th.

Adams’s Dilbert was launched in 1989 and syndicated in national newspapers until 2023. Showcasing the foibles of white-collar cubicle drones, it was a mini-phenomenon, spawning a computer game, a short-lived animated series, and mountains of tie-in merchandise. Dilbert was, per Bloomberg Businessweek, a “cult hero to millions of American workers.”

But if workers loved Dilbert, an interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian proved Adams didn’t necessarily love them. “The fact that corporate downsizing is good for the economy is indisputable,” Adams said, adding that “anybody with an I.Q. of more than 80 would agree.” No wonder Adams so strongly supported Trump, a man whose tv catchphrase was “You’re fired.” Businessweek reported that CEOs, too, were Dilbert fans, hanging “him on the wall.” Indeed, one Dilbert collection took its title from an admission by Adams: “I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot.”

Multinational corporations were overjoyed to partner with Adams in a variety of merchandising deals. Ben and Jerry’s released a “Dilbert’s World: Totally Nuts” ice cream flavor, Dilbert shilled for Computer Associates International in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and Xerox used the character in their official training manuals. There were further cash-ins like the Dilberito, which one reviewer claimed was designed by “someone who eats lunch without much thought to taste.” Adams became a popular speaker at business seminars, dishing out wisdom for the Pointy Haired Bosses of the world.

It’s tempting to see this as one more example of the dominant corporate capitalist culture defanging its critics, but Adams had precious little bite to begin with. Dilbert was no Mr. Block, a work that also mocked sections of the proletariat. Mr. Block, however, wanted to agitate workers to join a revolutionary union. Dilbert, by contrast, was the opium of the people. It allowed workers to harmlessly blow off some steam rather than challenge the status quo. No wonder bosses often gave workers Dilbert collections as presents. It was Brave New World’s soma in a comic book. This isn’t just overhyped leftist media analysis. That same Businessweek article contained this line: “Executives say Dilbert provides an escape valve…”

In the 1990s, left-wing critics responded to the neutralizing effects of Dilbert. In the Baffler, Tom Vanderbilt reflected on the popularity of the character among his coworkers at an unnamed media conglomerate.

In the face of real threats from a ruthless and all-too-knowing management, we turned to a fantasy office world in which managers were obvious incompetents, in which new motivational schemes were self-evidently ridiculous, and in which anonymous cubicled office drones held the real power. Even downsizing seemed innocuous in Dilbert, a practical joke that was always happening to someone else.

Vanderbilt argued the comic’s “refusal to do anything more than gripe helped more to naturalize the managerial culture than to subvert it. Symbolic acts of everyday resistance, it turns out, are healthy. They are exactly what the boss wants to see on your cubicle wall.” Symbolic resistance usually costs multinational corporations little to nothing. Media watchdog Norman Solomon and cartoonist Tom Tomorrow released a book full of similar critiques entitled The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh. Although out of print its worth a read, if only to see what made Adams so angry that he devoted a section of his book Joy of Work to a response.

It was Adams’s remarks outside the comic strip that revealed a remarkable shift to the far-right. To be clear, the cartoonist has made some uncomfortable statements before, such as when he questioned whether six million Jews had really perished in the Nazi Holocaust in 2006. Politics, though, had not been a major focus of his sustained commentary until Donald Trump’s first run for president.

Adams was part of the radical fringe of the pro-Trump movement. Trump’s habitual lies were not bugs, but features of his status as a “master persuader.” Adams joined in with his own lies. The lethal rally of fascists in Charlottesville was “an American intel op against Trump.” The Dilbert TV show was canceled because Adams was guilty of “being white” while the network wanted to court African Americans. Republicans would “be hunted” if Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. And on it goes.

In 2023, Dilbert was dropped from its syndicate after Adams ranted on a YouTube video that “white people” should “get the hell away from Black people; just get the fuck away.” Adams relaunched the strip as Dilbert Reborn on conservative crowdfunding website Locals. Free from editorial pressures or need to cater to newspaper readers, this is Adams unfiltered. The results were atrocious. Right-wing talking points crowd out any attempts at humor. It’s indistinguishable from parody.

Today, when newspapers are shutting down all over, and some still in print are dropping their comics sections, the question arises: Is another Scott Adams possible? I’m not sure. Is another Scott Adams necessary? Surely not.

When Adams died, the White House posted an AI generated tribute of a beaming Trump, Vance, and off-model Dilbert to X. That tribute sums up where Adams’s career took him better than mere words.

Hank Kennedy