And now for a bit of racism

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Burning Petard
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And now for a bit of racism

Post by Burning Petard »

I could have put this in Politics, but Decided it was beyond politics, so I put this in Lifestyle.

I read a commentary/art form that was once a big part of newspapers. Usually just called 'the comics.' They have a long tradition of story form, political commentary, serious art forms, jokes. I check the Washington Post almost daily just for the comic section. Yesterday, Saturday, February 25, the system locked up when I clicked on the strip by Scott Adams, "Dilbert" A little search online revealed that WaPo and many other online and in print services had dropped it, because of remarks Mr. Adams made about black people in his online product that he controls himself. My first reaction was to remember when when the strip 'Pogo' by Walt Kelly was threatened with boycott by many papers because it attacked Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin with a character in Pogo called Wiley Cat who looked just like tail-gunner Joe.

The threat was that they would never run Pogo ever again in their papers if he ever showed Wiley Cat again.. Mr. Kelly immediately responded with a series of strips featuring long statements by Wiley Cat, with the dialogue balloons completely covering him, but the satire even more vicious than before. The papers capitulated. Now comics are not as important to the readers as they were back then.

This time the papers did not threaten, they just did it. No Dilbert. USA Today carried story about this and I quote from it:

Scott Adams defends comments

In another episode of his online show Saturday, Adams said he had been making a point that “everyone should be treated as an individual” without discrimination and "you should absolutely be racist whenever it’s to your advantage."

"But you should also avoid any group that doesn’t respect you, even if there are people within the group who are fine,” Adams said.

Adams has also continued to defend his remarks on Twitter, noting that he was getting "canceled."

Thus endeth the quote. I am left with my jaw hanging. What is a group? Does Mr. Adams urge me to avoid all comics because I feel he is a comic strip artist who doesn't respect me? How do I treat every one as an individual and still be absolutely a racist? Sure he is being cancelled. Mr. Scott is free to say anything he wants to say, and others are free to stop paying him for it. He can still say it, draw it, put it in his own web page. He cannot require WaPo to circulate it or require me to buy it.

But finally, Yes USA Today had extracted small snippets of a much longer statement. However, they cause me to wonder if Scott accurately represents a craziness, an self-contradiction that indicates racism is a mental health problem?

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MajGenl.Meade
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Burning Petard wrote:
Sun Feb 26, 2023 10:53 pm
Sure he is being cancelled. Mr. Scott is free to say anything he wants to say, and others are free to stop paying him for it. He can still say it, draw it, put it in his own web page. He cannot require WaPo to circulate it or require me to buy it.

snailgate
That's rather the point, snail. He IS NOT requiring the GestWaPo to circulate anything. Nor is he requiring anyone to buy it. He is being "cancelled" for something that was not in his comic strip, that was not offered to the newspaper. He said something or other (I don't care what but it looks a bit odd on the face of it) on his own website or blog - if someone want to be offended by it, they must go find it in order to be offended.

Roald Dahl was not a nice man in some ways - he said offensive things about Jews. But not in his books. So must we ban Charlie, James and various fruits and elevators, not to mention Esio Trot? No. If we have found a cause of offense, the remedy is for us as individuals not to buy the books. We don't need publishers acting like Victorian grannies, altho' they do have the right.
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by BoSoxGal »

Just within the last year Adams courted controversy by introducing the first black character in his strip’s 33 year history. Dave the black engineer, a diversity hire who identifies as white. https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.p ... s-dragged/

Nobody is banning Scott Adams. His merch and books are still for sale. He is already worth something like 70 million. I am not feeling any sympathy for him today. The cartoon was never that good but I guess for far too many Americans it reflects the insane experience of corporate America and cubicle life so very popular - as for me, it was one I often skipped. Now that I know more about the person who draws it I wouldn’t lay my eyes on it ever again just as I haven’t seen a Tom Cruise movie in nearly two decades.


On a brighter note, the brilliant creator of Calvin and Hobbes is publishing his first new work in decades come October. It is not anything to do with C&H but looks like it could be really good stuff - I’ve preordered. Just FYI in case you hadn’t heard.
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Dilbert was funny when I worked in corporate America but I went off Scott Adams when he announced in 2016 that he was a Trump supporter. I'm sure Dilbert is still (often) amusing but he is no longer on my occasional 'must catch up' list which includes Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County) and Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine).

The whole problem of dismissing art - in whatever form - because you don't like the politics or behavior of the artist is scary. I still like Placid Domingo's Verdi Requiem despite the fact that he is accused of being a serial sexual harassed. And if you placed Hitler and Churchill artworks together I doubt that the average viewer would have an opinion as to who was the better painter. Of course if you put name tags on them the typical art critic would find that Hitler's paintings were stale and lacking artistic merit while Churchill's were warm and evocative.

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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by BoSoxGal »

I can appreciate the obvious artistic merit of Wagner’s music and still choose 99% of the time not to listen to it because I refuse to attach my eyes or ears to things created by people whose world view or behavior I find deeply répugnant. Same with Cruise, same with Adams.

There is no governmental censorship happening here, what is the controversy? He’s got 70 million net worth, he won’t worry about the bills the way most of humanity must. His stuff is still available on the shelf to buy or borrow - whatever the artistic merit those who want to see it, can.
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Sue U
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Sue U »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:36 pm
I can appreciate the obvious artistic merit of Wagner’s music and still choose 99% of the time not to listen to it because I refuse to attach my eyes or ears to things created by people whose world view or behavior I find deeply répugnant. Same with Cruise, same with Adams.
I have been struggling with this issue for quite some time and I still don't know how to manage it. Very bad people have created some very good and highly influential art. (Not Scott Adams; Dilbert was funny 30 years go and stopped being funny -- generously -- 20 years ago. There are only so many jokes in a cubicle.) I confront this problem frequently in my musical pursuits. Wagner was a rabid anti-semite and racist, and was revered by the Nazis as a cultural icon. Carl Orff was (apparently) not an anti-semite but literally collaborated with the Nazis to promote himself and his music while other artists were banned as "degenerate" and forced to flee. Both were reprehensible in terms of their personal conduct, but created music that is both enduringly popular and essential to the development and understanding of the art. I don't think it's possible to separate artists from their work, since art is by definition a form of intimate personal expression. Yet, even if I wanted to, I can't live in a world without Wagner and Orff -- not only with respect to their own compositions, but because of their influence on all those who came after. Still, it seems grotesque to say, "These were awful guys, now let's all hear Parsifal and Carmina Burana." I just don't know how to process the contradiction between their immorality and their genius.
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BoSoxGal
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by BoSoxGal »

Yes I struggle with it all the time myself, music and literature both.

In the music arena I struggle a lot with wishing I could still enjoy the Michael Jackson tunes that are so strongly associated with my early childhood and teen years, but for obvious reasons I don’t so much. I only hear his stuff in passing anymore - background music at the grocery store if that.

I once wore out the tape I had of Don McClean’s American Pie album, and still to this day those songs knock around in my head if I make it to the old age home someday and my mind is going I’ll be humming Vincent. I never listen to the album anymore since I learned Don McClean was a domestic abuser like my own father.

If only every musical artist could be like Harry Chapin.

Don’t get me started on one of the biggest such conflicts in my mind, over my love for the works of Dickens and my loathing for the kind of man he was to the woman who gave him all the best of her lifeblood as well as ten children.
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Sue U
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Sue U »

At the orchestra's fall concert we played Wagner, and throughout it in my head I was saying "Oh my God this is so beautifully written; oh my God the guy who wrote it was SUCH an ASSHOLE."
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Econoline »

A bit of context for you, SG:
“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the fuck away,” Adams said in response to the survey. “Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. So I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. Like I’ve been doing it all my life and the only outcome is I get called a racist."

It is not clear how the Dilbert Guy thinks he has been so fabulously helpful to "Black America," or to anyone else for that matter. Although one would have to assume that if you are spending your whole life "being helpful to Black America" and people just keep calling you a racist, that you just may be doing it wrong. (source)
And to back up and explain the "survey" referenced above:
The source of Adams' initial upset was a Rasmussen survey finding that only 53 percent of Black people agree with the sentiment "It's okay to be white," entirely ignoring the fact that the whole "It's okay to be white" thing is a racist troll campaign first started by racist jackasses on 4chan and swiftly adopted by the larger white supremacist movement.
Further explanation from the Anti-Defamation League:
The phrase “It’s Okay To Be White” is a slogan popularized in late 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the controversial discussion forum 4chan. The original idea behind the campaign was to choose an ostensibly innocuous and inoffensive slogan, put that slogan on fliers bereft of any other words or imagery, then place the fliers in public locations. Originators assumed that “liberals” would react negatively to such fliers and condemn them or take them down, thus “proving” that liberals did not even think it was “okay" to be white.

Whether the original trollers were white supremacist or not, actual white supremacists quickly began to promote the campaign—often adding Internet links to white supremacist websites to the fliers or combining the phrase with white supremacist language or imagery. This was not a surprise, as white supremacists had themselves used the phrase in the past—including on fliers—long before the 4chan campaign originated.

The original flier campaign occurred in late October 2017 and a similar campaign took place at the same time in 2018, but use of the phrase has extended far beyond the flier campaigns.
Also too, today's Wonkette Updatte.
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

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6347EB42-A014-45AD-8646-F8FAF55D4519.jpeg
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by liberty »

Racism is the belief that one race is superior or inferior to another. The best I can make out is this guy believes that black people are hostile toward white people and that it's a bad idea to be around such people. Even if he's wrong, I don't see where that's racist. And I think he's wrong; most of the black people I've come in contact with have not struck me as being hostile. I've only met one black man in recent years that acted like that toward me. But as I said, it's not racist to be wrong. However, I do not live in a black inner-city neighborhood; it might be different there. There does not appear to be a shortage of Internet videos showing white people being attacked by blacks.
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Big RR »

I tend to try and view works of art on their own and not consider the author/composer, etc. I agree art is ordinarily defined as the expression of the artist, yet it is very difficult to join the wondrous ennobling works of Wagner's with his personality as we understand it. IMHO, humans are very complex, and sometimes even the biggest asshole can come up with the most wondrous artistic creations--it's just the way we are. No one is all good or all bad, and IMHO Wagner was more than the apparent asshole that he was. So even though I would never want to talk with him (if that were possible) I can appreciate the art and cannot ignore it. However, I personally would draw the line at politically motivated works or works created to raise money for a political cause, as the politics are clearly part of it. There are many things I would avoid based on the political content.

I understand some feel differently, and that is their right. If you choose not to listen, view, etc. some work of art because of who created it, that is your absolute right, but IMHO there is a big difference between doing that and seeking to get the artworks banned from exhibition, which I do think is very dangerous. The blacklists of the 50s clearly show where that sort of thing leads.
Last edited by Big RR on Wed Mar 01, 2023 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Methuselah »

It took me a while to decode BSG's cartoon. They are sitting in a swastika.

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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Burning Petard »

I take as a matter of faith, that there is truth in Sturgeon's law that 90% of everything is shit. This implies for me that the shit will decompose and the other 10% will survive to enrich the cultural wealth of the world. If there is value in Dilbert, Pogo, L'il Abner, the Yellow Kid, then they will be easily available to the masses in some form a hundred years from now.

I understand the viewpoint of those who prefer not to listen to the music of Wagner. I have a queer friend who will not read anything written by Orson Scott Card, yet I find his 'Ender' series profoundly anti-war and pro individual responsibility freely given to the community. When I entered college, I was completely ignorant of opera and classical music. The first week, a music instructor had a stack of old 12 inch 78s only pressed one side outside his office door, free to a good home. I took one back my dorm room just to explore this novelty. The label was in German and I did not read it. Out came the the most beautiful and simultaneously saddest sound I had ever heard from the human voice. It was "In fernem Land" from Wagner's Lohengrin.

So where does one draw the line? Is Mark Twain to be shunned because he used the 'N' word? For me Huck Finn is one of the noblest characters in literature. "well, I guess I will go to Hell then." for me is an overwhelming re-statement of the lesson of 'the Good Samaritan"

Have you ever worked under a 'contract of employment at will.'? Means the boss can fire you at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. Is it unethical and immoral for the NFL to consider the actions of players in the privacy of their own homes, during the off season? Seemed to me to have been a bad business to fire a quarterback who was performing better than average because he knelt while the flag was brought onto the field in manner forbidden by the federal regulations on display of the flag. But then I have have never owned a major league sport team.

Scott Adams is no tyro in this business of newspaper comic strips. He and his agent(s) probably have a multiple page contract explaining the conditions of pay and the conditions of art production. I have seen nothing about Scott suing anybody for breach of contract.

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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Econoline »

Jim Wright (on Facebook) gets it:
At this point, Adams is more (in)famous for his bigoted screeds than he is for his comic strip. And I doubt any of these papers had any real angst over Adams racism -- I mean, it's not like they didn't know who and what Adams was already, right?

Cynically? I suspect this is about profit. More about taking the opportunity to dump a stale 40-year-old strip and pocket the syndication fee.

Papers are very lean nowadays, those that are left. And comic strips that don't bring in subscribers are a loss that most publications simply can't afford anymore.
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Econoline »

One more (from someone on Substack, this time) post on this...the new (new to me, anyway) piece of relevant information here is that "According to Rasmussen, there were 1000 people surveyed, 13% of whom were black." So Scott Adams thought that a poll that only surveyed 130 black people could represent the views of 41 million black Americans?????
Rasmussen survey.jpg
Hmm. So 26% (=34 black people) "somewhat" or "strongly disagreed" and another 21% (=27 black people) were "not sure". :roll: :loon
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Bicycle Bill »

As of 2020, White Americans are the racial majority, with non-Hispanic whites representing 57.8% of the population. Hispanic and Latino Americans are the largest ethnic minority, comprising 18.7% of the population, while Black or African Americans are the second largest racial minority, making up 12.1%.
(from Wikipedia, based on data released as part of the 2020 US Census)
A poll in which 13% of the respondents are black is merely a true representation of the demographics of the US.  Anything greater than that would be over-representation of a minority group and could potentially skew the results as well.

That's why I take the results and findings of almost all polls with a huge grain of salt because they all are (to my way of thinking) surveying an insufficient number of respondents to be able to extrapolate any kind of meaningful data.  The fact that all the way up to November 8th the polls and pundits were all saying that Trump didn't have a chance in a cartload of winning the election — only to find out on Wednesday morning that they blew the call worse than the Chicago Daily Tribune did in 1948 when they printed the "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" headline — merely proves my point.
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Sue U
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Sue U »

Econoline wrote:
Wed Mar 08, 2023 5:28 am
So Scott Adams thought that a poll that only surveyed 130 black people could represent the views of 41 million black Americans?????
Just FYI, for a population of 41 million people, you would need a responding sample size of 385 just to get to a 5% margin of error, 601 to get to 4%, 2401 to get to 2% and 9602 to get to 1%. Sample size calculator for all you size queens.
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Scooter »

Indeed, a subsample of 130 produces a margin of error of +/- 8.6%, meaning that blacks who somewhat or strongly disagreed could be as low as 9%.

Plus, the statement "it's ok to be white" might carry any number of negative associations. Some might have seen it as akin to "all lives matter" or as implying white supremacy.
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Burning Petard
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Re: And now for a bit of racism

Post by Burning Petard »

Yes, Jim Wright has a point. Much of American events can be explained by just 'follow the money'

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