From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2026/01/13/scott-adams-dead-
dilbert/

Scott Adams, rCyDilbertrCO creator who poked fun at bad bosses, dies at 68

His three-panel comic strip was once published in more than 2,000
newspapers. Publishers cut ties with Mr. Adams after he made racist
comments on a YouTube live stream.

By Harrison Smith
Scott Adams, who became a hero to millions of cubicle-dwelling office
workers as the creator of the satirical comic strip rCLDilbert,rCY only to rebrand himself as a digital provocateur rCo at home in the Trump erarCOs right-wing mediasphere rCo with inflammatory comments about race, politics
and identity, died Jan. 13. He was 68.

His former wife Shelly Miles announced his death in a live stream Tuesday morning, reading a statement she said Mr. Adams had prepared before his
death. rCLI had an amazing life,rCY the statement said in part. rCLI gave it everything I had.rCY

Mr. Adams announced in May 2025 that he had metastatic prostate cancer,
with only months to live. In a YouTube live stream, he said he had tried
to avoid discussing his diagnosis (rCLonce you go public, yourCOre just the dying cancer guyrCY) but decided to speak up after President Joe Biden revealed he had the same illness.

rCLIrCOd like to extend my respect and compassion for the ex-president and his family because theyrCOre going through an especially tough time,rCY he said. rCLItrCOs a terrible disease.rCY

Mr. Adams was working as an engineer for the Pacific Bell telephone
company when he began doodling on his cubicle whiteboard in the 1980s, dreaming of a new, more creatively fulfilling career as a cartoonist.
Before long, he was amusing colleagues with his drawings of a mouthless, potato-shaped office worker: an anonymous-looking man with a bulbous nose, furrowed pate and upturned red-and-white striped tie.

His doodles evolved into rCLDilbert,rCY a syndicated comic strip that debuted in 1989 and eventually appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers around the world, rivaling rCLPeanutsrCY and rCLGarfieldrCY in popularity.

Years before the film comedy rCLOffice SpacerCY and TV series rCLThe OfficerCY satirized the workplace on-screen, rCLDilbertrCY poked fun at corporate jargon, managerial ineptitude and the indignities of life in the cubicle
farm.

In one strip, the title character is awarded a promotion rCLwith no extra
pay, just more responsibility,rCY because rCLitrCOs how we recognize our best people.rCY In another, herCOs presented with an rCLemployee location devicerCY rCo a
dog collar.

Other rCLDilbertrCY cartoons could be crassly funny. Seeking to improve the companyrCOs image, DilbertrCOs pointy-haired boss hires an ad agency that uses a computer program to come up with a new rCLhi-tech namerCY for the firm, using random words from astronomy and electronics. Their suggestion: rCLUranus-Hertz.rCY

Mr. Adams proved adept at growing his audience during the tech boom of the 1990s, creating a rCLDilbertrCY website long before most other cartoonists took to the internet. He also became the first major syndicated cartoonist
to include his email address in his comic strip, an innovation that
allowed readers to contact him directly with ideas. Their feedback
convinced him to focus the cartoon entirely on the workplace, after some
of the striprCOs early installments explored DilbertrCOs home life.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal in 1994, Mr. Adams observed that
rCLthe universal threadrCY uniting the striprCOs readers rCLis powerlessness. Dilbert has no power over anything.rCY

By the end of the decade, Dilbert seemed to be everywhere, appearing on
the cover of business magazines and in book-length compendiums. Mr. Adams signed off on the creation of a Dilbert Visa card and a Ben & JerryrCOs ice cream flavor, branded as Totally Nuts; licensed his cartoon characters for commercials; and partnered with rCLSeinfeldrCY writer Larry Charles to develop an animated rCLDilbertrCY television series, which aired for two seasons on the now-defunct UPN network.

Capitalizing on the cartoonrCOs success, he also put out a shelfful of satirical business books, beginning with the 1996 bestseller rCLThe Dilbert Principle.rCY Inspired by the Peter principle, a management concept in which employees are said to be promoted to their level of incompetence, Mr.
Adams argued that rCLthe most ineffective workers are systematically moved
to the place where they can do the least damage: management.rCY

He wasnrCOt entirely joking. As he saw it, the people who spouted inane
ideas, sucked up to management and pretended they knew more than they did
were the ones who got promoted. The workplace was a mess, he suggested,
but by calling out bossesrCO bad behavior, rCLDilbertrCY could be a force for good.

rCLI heard from lots of people who told me, rCyMy boss started to say something that was ridiculous rCo management fad talk, buzzwords rCo but he stopped himself and said, rCLOkay, this sounds like it came out of a rCyDilbertrCO comic,rCY and then started speaking in English again.rCO

rCLThere is a fear of being the target of humor,rCY Mr. Adams told the Harvard Business Review.

Companies such as Xerox incorporated the character into communications and training programs. But some critics found the cartoonrCOs sarcasm more corrosive than entertaining. Author and progressive activist Norman
Solomon, who wrote a book-length critique of the comic, argued that rCLDilbertrCY was hardly subversive, saying that it offered more for bosses than workers.

rCL rCyDilbertrCO does not suggest that we do much other than roll our eyes, find a suitably acid quip, and continue to smolder while avoiding deeper questions about corporate power in our society,rCY Solomon wrote.

Mr. Adams scoffed at the criticism, lampooning Solomon by name in his
books and comic strips. rCLMy goal is not to change the world,rCY he told the Associated Press in 1997. rCLMy goal is to make a few bucks and hope you
laugh in the process.rCY

In interviews, he was often self-deprecating, declaring that his comic
strip was rCLpoorly drawnrCY and noting that long before he made rCLDilbertrCY he
rCLfailed at many things,rCY including computer games he attempted to program and sell. His other failures included the Dilberito, a line of vitamin-
filled veggie wraps that ended up making people rCLvery gassy,rCY and his short-lived attempt at managing an unprofitable restaurant, StaceyrCOs at Waterford, that he owned in the Bay Area.

rCLCertainly IrCOm an example of the Dilbert Principle,rCY he told the New York
Times in 2007, a few months into his stint as a restaurant boss. rCLI canrCOt cook. I canrCOt remember customersrCO orders. I canrCOt do most of the jobs I pay people to do.rCY (Employees told the newspaper that Mr. Adams was loyal and kind, yet totally clueless. rCLIrCOve been in this business 23 years, and IrCOve seen a lot of things,rCY the head chef said. rCLHe truly has no idea what
herCOs doing.rCY)

On the side, Mr. Adams blogged about fitness, politics and the art of seduction rCo drawing, he said, on his training as a certified hypnotist, which he learned before becoming a cartoonist. He also wrote about his struggles with focal dystonia, a neurological disorder, which caused
spasms in his pinkie finger that made it difficult to draw. Mr. Adams said
he developed tricks to get around the issue, holding his pen or pencil to
the paper for just a few seconds at a time, and underwent experimental
surgery to treat a related condition, spasmodic dysphonia, that hindered
his ability to speak.

Politically, he cast himself as an independent, saying he didnrCOt vote and was not a member of any party. But he also veered into far-right political terrain on his blog, including in a 2006 post in which he questioned rCLhow the Holocaust death total of 6 million was determined.rCY A few years later, writing about rCLmenrCOs rights,rCY he compared societyrCOs treatment of women to
its treatment of children and people with mental disabilities.

rCLYou donrCOt argue with a four-year old about why he shouldnrCOt eat candy for
dinner. You donrCOt punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you donrCOt argue when a woman tells you sherCOs only making 80 cents to your dollar. ItrCOs the path of least resistance,rCY he wrote.

Mr. Adams made headlines with his prediction that Donald Trump, whom he considered a master of persuasion, would win the 2016 presidential
election. He was later invited to the White House after publishing the
2017 nonfiction book rCLWin Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts DonrCOt Matter.rCY (The bookrCOs cover art featured an orange-hued drawing of Dogbert, DilbertrCOs megalomaniacal pet dog, with a Trumplike swoosh of hair.)


From bank teller to cartoonist
Scott Raymond Adams was born in Windham, New York, a ski town in the Catskills, on June 8, 1957. His father was a postal clerk, and his mother
was a real estate agent who later worked on a speaker-factory assembly
line.

Growing up, Mr. Adams copied characters out of his favorite comic strips, Charles M. SchulzrCOs rCLPeanutsrCY and Russell MyersrCO rCLBroom-Hilda.rCY He applied
for a correspondence course at the Famous Artists School but was rejected,
he said, because he was only 11. The minimum age was 12.

Mr. Adams eventually took a drawing course at Hartwick College in Oneonta,
an hourrCOs drive from his hometown. He received the lowest grade in the
class and decided to focus instead on economics, receiving a bachelorrCOs degree in 1979. He moved to San Francisco, got a job as a bank teller at Crocker National Bank and, in his telling, was twice robbed at gunpoint
while working behind the counter.

At night, he took business classes at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned an MBA in 1986 and joined PacBell as an applications engineer, though he found himself deeply unhappy. rCLAbout 60 percent of my job at Pacific Bell involved trying to look busy,rCY he wrote in a 2013
book, rCLHow to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the
Story of My Life.rCY

After watching a public television series, rCLFunny Business: The Art in Cartooning,rCY he decided he had found his calling. Mr. Adams struck up a correspondence with the showrCOs host, cartoonist John rCLJackrCY Cassady, who encouraged him to submit to major magazines like Playboy and the New
Yorker.

All his cartoons were rejected. But with CassadyrCOs encouragement, Mr.
Adams continued to draw, waking up at 4 a.m. and sitting down with a cup
of coffee to work on doodles of Dilbert and other characters. He stayed motivated in part by writing an affirmation: rCLI, Scott Adams, will become
a famous cartoonist.rCY

Even after he signed a contract to publish rCLDilbertrCY through United Feature Syndicate, Mr. Adams continued to work at his day job, making
$70,000 a year and gathering ideas for his strip while sitting at cubicle
No. 4S700R. He left the company in 1995, and two years later he won the National Cartoonists SocietyrCOs highest honor, the Reuben Award for cartoonist of the year.

Mr. Adams was twice married and divorced, to Shelly Miles and Kristina
Basham. Information on survivors was not available.

Looking back on his career, Mr. Adams said he was especially proud of two novellas he had written, rCLGodrCOs DebrisrCY (2001) and the sequel rCLThe Religion WarrCY (2004). The latter was set in 2040 and revolved around a civilizational clash between the West and a fundamentalist Muslim society
in the Middle East.

Discussing the plot in a 2017 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mr.
Adams said that the Muslim extremists are defeated after the hero builds a wall around them and rCLessentially kills everybody there.rCY

rCLI have to be careful, because IrCOm talking about something pretty close to genocide, so IrCOm not saying I prefer it, IrCOm saying I predict it,rCY he added.

The magazine reported that Mr. Adams believed the novellas, not rCLDilbert,rCY would be his ultimate legacy.


Amid a national reckoning on race in the 2020s, Mr. Adams sparked a
backlash for his criticisms of diversity, equity and inclusion programs,
and for social media posts in which he joked that he was rCLgoing to self- identify as a Black womanrCY after President Joe Biden vowed to nominate an African American woman to the Supreme Court. In 2022, he introduced the striprCOs first Black character, an engineer named Dave who announces to colleagues that he identifies rCLas White,rCY ruining managementrCOs plan to rCLadd some diversity to the engineering team.rCY

The following year, rCLDilbertrCY was dropped by hundreds of newspapers, including The Washington Post, after Mr. Adams delivered a rant that was widely decried as hateful and racist. Appearing on his YouTube live-stream show, rCLReal Coffee With Scott Adams,rCY he discussed a controversial Rasmussen poll asking people if they agreed with the statement rCLItrCOs okay to be White,rCY a slogan associated with the white supremacist movement.
About a quarter of Black respondents said rCLno.rCY

Mr. Adams was appalled by the results. He declared that African Americans
were rCLa hate group,rCY adding: rCLI donrCOt want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, 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.rCY

Within a week his syndicate and publisher, Andrews McMeel Universal, cut
ties with the cartoonist. Mr. Adams defended his comments, saying he had
meant the remarks as hyperbole, and found support from conservative
political activists as well as billionaire Tesla executive Elon Musk.

In a follow-up show on YouTube, he disavowed racism against rCLindividualsrCY while also telling viewers that rCLyou should absolutely be racist whenever itrCOs to your advantage.rCY Weeks later, he relaunched rCLDilbertrCY on the subscription website Locals, vowing that the comic would be rCLspicierrCY rCo less rCLP.C.rCY rCo rCLthan the original.rCY

rCLOnly the dying leftist Fake News industry canceled me (for out-of-context news of course),rCY he tweeted in March 2023. rCLSocial media and banking unaffected. Personal life improved. Never been more popular in my life.rCY
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