This Guy: Scott Adams

At one time I would have written a TFG post about him and his performative assholery, but today, I learned that his prostate cancer is bad with not many months left, and I am just profoundly sad

It is somewhat bittersweet writing about Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the Dilbert cartoons.

In one sense, it was part of my formative years in tech firms, reading Dilbert, the tale of an awkward engineer in corporate America, was someone that I could easily relate to (I was never a true engineer, I was in applications, and then product management/marketing.) But I did enjoy reading the strip each day.

The cartoon was largely apolitical, focusing on office dynamics of a typical work place. Sort of a “The Office” in 3 or 6 panels each day.

The artwork was competent, but not spectacular, its true magic was capturing the essence of Dilbert, described by an old girlfriend from that era as a weirdork, it worked.

I drifted away in the early ‘aughts as life became complicated and I stopped reading the physical paper (and finding the comics online was not difficult, but it was an extra step).

Later, I was inundated with the insane rightward political shift of Mr. Adams, as evidenced on Twitter. He was about as obnoxious as Catturd2, and others. My belief is that “woke” and “DEI” were his pet boogeymen that really shifted his frame¹.

In 2023, he lost much of his syndicated audience when he riffed on a poll question about whether it was OK to be “white”.

The polling group presented survey takers with an oddly phrased question: Did they agree or disagree with the statement, “It’s OK to be white”?

When a slim majority of Black respondents said yes, comic strip creator Scott Adams cited the results to argue that Black Americans are “a hate group,” urging White people to “get the hell away from” Black people. His racist rant prompted hundreds of newspapers to drop his “Dilbert” comic in disapproval, rendering the decades-old cartoon homeless.

First, the poll was Rasmussen, so you know it is more than a bit right leaning in its intent. Still, Mr. Adams went on his rant and torpedoed his career.

There is so much chronicling his drift rightward, but let’s just agree that he was a Trumper from the git-go.

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the Biden admission of having stage 4, aggressive prostate cancer that had metastasized over the weekend, Mr. Adams revealed that he too has the same diagnosis. At 67, that is not good.

Anyhow, here is the gifted link: https://wapo.st/438vif3

Speaking to thousands on a YouTube live stream Monday, Adams, 67, expressed empathy for former president Joe Biden, who announced earlier this week that he has prostate cancer and that it has spread to his bones.

“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has spread to my bones,” he said. “My life expectancy is maybe this summer,” he added, stating that he has “respect and compassion and sympathy” for the former president during his battle against a “terrible disease.”

This is a pretty stark admission, and it is a bleak window into how this gets aggressive. I have read a lot of speculation about how the Biden camp must have been hiding this for months if not years, but what little digging I did showed that yes, most prostate cancers can be caught with frequent screening and testing, sometimes, it just hits hard and fast like a Mike Tyson left hook. That appears to be the case with Biden, and reading about what Scott Adams has shared is shocking.

“The disease is already intolerable. I can tell you that I don’t have good days,” Adams said during the live stream. “… Nope. Every day is a nightmare, and evening is even worse.”

He said he has been using a walker, and that he is “always in pain.” Previously, he advocated for the passage of the California End of Life Option Act, a law that allows physicians to prescribe an aid-in-dying drug to some terminally ill patients. Adams said he considers it a “civilized process” and an “option” for himself.

Yikes. That sounds unpleasant. Both for Scott and for what Joe is going to go through.

As much as I loathe what a once beloved cartoonist became, I cannot harbor any ill will in this case. I will hope for the best, but here’s the rub: Cancer sucks.

Joe Biden doesn’t deserve this, and neither does Scott Adams.

In another timeline, had I been writing this stack when Adams lost his shit in 2023, I would have written a “This Fucking Guy” post about him.

Today, I genuinely feel for him and his short future.

And fuck all the MAGA assholes who are piling on about Biden’s diagnosis. I hope they all get raped with a chainsaw.

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1. Ever notice how the biggest whingers about woke and DEI are middle aged, mediocre white dudes who are convinced that their station in life was 100% earned, and not attributed to their skin color and the inclusion of the Y chromosome?