There was a time when I thought Dilbert was funny. Hell, maybe there was a time when Dilbert was funny. That time, however, died just around the creation of the Dilbert TV show. Lame.
The thing is… we tend to feel like people who can make us laugh might also have some insight. We confuse wit and intelligence. For a while I thought that Scott Adams had a pretty good head on his shoulders… after all, he gave me Dogbert.
Then, for a long time, I stopped thinking about Dilbert and Scott altogether.
Just the other day however Scott (who has a blog, obviously) put up a post that I found frankly not so much insulting as sad. I felt sad for his obvious internal anger and some unspecified form of guilt but also sad for the now dead image I had long harbored that he had some form of insight. Rather, he’s just another guy with “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and a very confused idea of what freedom (specifically free speech) is. Not to mention a clearly pacifistic streak that would qualify him for a Darwin award if others weren’t willing to die to protect his ass.
The post itself is supposed to be sarcasm. In effect it defends Iranian President Ahmadinejad and gets all bitter and pissy that a man who has openly declared his dedication to the destruction of America wasn’t allowed to come to the sight of a terrorist attack Iran almost certainly helped bring about and insult us with crocodile tears.
“TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mualem here on Tuesday assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives.” – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is obviously our friend (not)
It goes on to spout the normal anti-Israel sentiments so commonly held on the left when it isn’t bitching about Catholicism and insulting Holocaust survivors. Scott didn’t get around to presenting a “Bush 9/11 Conspiracy” theory, but I have no real doubts that was just an oversight. He seems like the kind of person who buys into that stuff.
Most amusing is this bit of idiocy about free speech…
“I was happy to hear that NYC didn’t allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech.” – Scott Adams
It makes zero sense to me. Is Scott really trying to tell us the following:
- That the President of Iran has no platform of his own from which to make his views known? He is, somehow, without a voice? Is Scott really that ignorant?
- That it is the responsibility of the United States to provide access to our monuments and grave sites to anyone from anywhere who wants to come and spout off? Are we really somehow now beholden to the entire fucking planet?
What makes it all the more ironic is that Scott can make a post like this within the USA without any fear all the while implying that freedom of speech is dead. If he were to make a equivalent post in the country of the man he is bending over backward to defend he would be in dire risk of torture or murder.
Just like so many people constantly use the things that only a successful capitalistic society can create for them to try and dismantle that same system… so too do many people make use of the freedoms then spend so much time shouting they don’t have to try and convince others a revolution is required. It’s pretty sad.
The comments on his blog are pretty mixed. Some zealotry (in both directions and a lot of idiots who are deeply confused and under the impression that somehow being a “free thinker” means blaming the United States for everything they can.
Morons.