Dilbert creator Scott Adams just took a huge hit following his racist rant that has already prompted several newspapers to pull his office-based comic strip. On Sunday evening, Andrews McMeel Universal announced that it will be “severing” its relationship with Adams. Essentially, this makes Dilbert dead in the water as McMeal Universal distributed the strip to newspapers as well as published collected books.
“The process of this termination will extend to all areas of our business with Adams and the Dilbert comic strip,” the publishing company wrote in a statement:
As a media and communications company, AMU values free speech. We are proud to promote and share many different voices and perspectives. But we will never support any commentary rooted in discrimination or hate. Recent comments by Scott Adams regarding race and race relations do not align with our core values as a company.
Our creator-first approach is foundational to AMU, and we deeply value our relationships with our creators. However, in the case with Adams, our vision and principles are not compatible.
Adams has been under fire since the middle of last week when he called Black people a “hate group” and instructed white people to “get the f*ck away” from them.
“Wherever you have to go, just get away,” Adams ranted. “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.”
The rant caused several newspapers to pull the Dilbert comic strip in condemnation of Adams’ remarks, which has now caused him to be dropped by his own distributor. However, Adams does have one powerful person on his side: Elon Musk. The Twitter CEO waded into the Dilbert controversy by declaring that actually, “The media is racist.”
For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians.
Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America.
Maybe they can try not being racist.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023
“For a very long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians,” Musk tweeted. “Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.”
Musk made those remarks early Sunday morning. By that evening, Andrews McMeel Universal severed its relationship with Adams, so clearly, Elon helped. Definitely made things better.