Notes from Upstream: Dilbert Meets the Outrage Machine

It's a one-sided fight, with a clear winner

I can code.

I developed my software development skills only through prodigious effort. Along with a nice living, it brought me immunity from the infamous jibe Washington Post and other “journalists” have routinely sneered out from their cozy office suites, usually targeting coal miners and other blue-collar casualties of their Leadership’s war on American working people.

Now Jeff Bezos has fired 300 of the Post’s slovenly slapdash snots. I call this a good start. It’s their turn. The gloaters themselves have been canned, ousted, dumped, sacked, terminated, dismissed, and cast into Stygian darkness. Bereft of any identifiable skill, they can call themselves “journalists” no more, if they ever could, which I dispute.

(And They Will Learn Nothing From The Experience)

The irony, if we need more, is that for me to repay them with their own jibe may be pointless, because the Post’s Democrat Party stenographers are hitting the bricks at the precise moment in history when AI is supposedly zeroing out the value of computer programming skills.

If that is true, learning to code would do them no good, even if they did possess the capacity for diligence, patience and bias-free logic required in that challenging work, which they do not.

Actually, I don’t believe the stories about AI ending human computer programming. Try this yourself: a simple Internet search on the terms “Cobol Programmers Needed,” returns thousands of images:

I Recognize All Those Acronyms

Of course, not everyone wants to move to Pretoria these days, but:

Personally Reassuring GIF

If this PQ writing gig should cease to bring burger meat to the Cossack family table I’ve got skills to fall back on.

Which brings me to Scott Adams, who possessed his own tech skills.

I am not writing about Scott Adams the mentor, sage and guru. Many have extolled the genius of that Scott Adams. The current late night TV ratings leader Greg Gutfield, for example:

“Scott Adams died today from cancer at the age of 68. People know him from Dilbert, one of the most successful cartoons of all time. I never read it…

“I’ve been in this business for 15 years and at Fox and my career didn’t change, literally did not change dramatically until I ran into Scott Adams. He became my mentor. The stuff that you hear me talk about a lot when I’m on this show and on The Five is because I get up in the morning and I listened to Coffee With Scott Adams. Probably the best morning show ever…he was the most important intellectual figure that I’ve had in my lifetime.”

I heard almost nothing from that Scott Adams. I am writing here about Scott Adams that comic strip artist, whom I know from Dilbert, which I used to appreciate from my cubicle in the bad old days when I had to think for a living.

His art told me that he had toiled in the same white collar information factories I and my fellow drones knew too well.

For one thing, he’d had to sit through too many meetings.

Are Meetings Self-Replicating?

Like me, he had probably experienced being the only person at a meeting of 15 or 20 coworkers who could actually perform the task the others were yammering on about. I bet his job title did not include the words “analyst” or “manager.”

What Managers Do

Legacy media like the Washington Post have never required their writers to know anything about the subjects they write about. Journalism majors explain quantum physics, English majors prattle about tariffs, and hair dressers babble about “pick sixes.”

It’s a circle jerk of ignorance.

Throw in the cheap partisanship, and you’ve summed up contemporary journalism.

Likewise most large institutions have decided that a manager doesn’t need to know even the bare essentials of whatever work they appoint him to manage.

Does Managing Require Knowledge Of Whatever The Manager Manages?

Adams knew the suffocating jargon of the contemporary workplace:

Clarity Is Not Our Friend

So-called “Vaccinations”:

Your Body, Our Self

Of course, someone had to rid the nation’s discourse of this troublesome pest.

In 2016, Adams initiated a podcast he called Real Coffee With Scott Adams. A few years later, in 2022, Adams happened on a poll according to which 26% of black respondents outright disagreed, and 21% weren’t sure, about the statement “It’s okay to be white.”

Not a digression: when a youngster I was talking with accused some other person of being racist because that person said, “It’s okay to be white,” I responded, “It is okay to be white.”

Why is it necessary even to say that?

Adams pointed out a disturbing poll result.

“47 [percent] of black respondents were not willing to say it’s okay to be white… And I would say, you know, 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.”

Adams went on to offer other opinions inconsistent with left-wing dogma.

To which I say, so what?

I spent my high school and college years in the Chicago area. At the time, Chicago was the world’s most segregated city outside South Africa. EVERYBODY knew there were neighborhoods you didn’t go into. It was just a fact, like the facts that you didn’t jump in front of an oncoming bus and that you didn’t smart off to Chicago cops.

It worked that way for everyone. Later, in Minnesota, a black friend needed my help in explaining to his white girlfriend why he wouldn’t be joining her at her friend’s wedding in Cicero (for those who don’t know Chicago, that’s a notoriously racist white Chicago neighborhood).

It’s still true. More than once black friends have counselled me not to perform music at certain venues and not to venture into the wrong place at the wrong time.

Of course, my white liberal friends never dare say things like that.

But in fact, several have experimented with renting as a white person in a black neighborhood and found it unworkable.

That’s life in the big city.

Since Adams had previously outed himself as a Trump voter, the Outrage Machine roared into high gear and mandated that everyone be indignant. In every one of its stories, the Washington Post labeled his comments a “racist rant.”

Newspapers stopped carrying Dilbert, Adams’ syndicator canceled their relationship, and book publishers stopped printing Dilbert collections

They manufactured their uproar too late. There are at least fifty Dilbert books already out there, both chronological and theme collections.

Dilbert lives!

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Max Cossack lives with his wife Susan in a dusty little village in Arizona in a house two cats patrol to make sure that they and their humans are safe.

Also, in case you missed it, he recently released the brand-new Max Cossack novel Deep Fakery. It’s available in eBook or paperback on Amazon.

Or you can also get a very special temporary discount at VWAMBooks.com. You can purchase a personally autographed Deep Fakery paperback at 10% off, PLUS 1 through 7 additional books at the very special price of only $8 each, including any other Max Cossack novels and any Susan Vass collection of columns. At checkout, just enter DFDISCOUNT (all caps, no spaces) for this unique deal.

Meanwhile, at Riveting Tales from Max Cossack – Walking Creek World, intrepid novel reader L.E. Joiner has posted a photo of his own personal stack of Max Cossack novels, as well as some kind commentary which quotes a passage from the earlier novel High Jingo:

“Here’s the enigmatic, but fascinating Gus Dropo, who with his dog Shakey has encountered a couple of scraggly trespassers in the old mine where the gold disk was found; they had been feeding the dog, which they called Rex:

‘. . . Gus felt a stab of sympathy, but he had to say it. “I’m afraid you’ll both have to leave.”

The woman asked, “What about Rex?”

“That’s another thing,” Gus said. “You have been feeding my dog.”

Tiffany [the woman] scowled. “You claiming not only the land but the dog too?”

Gus nodded.

Tiffany said, “Well you ought to feed your dog, Mister.”

Gus pointed down at Shakey. “His name isn’t Rex. It’s Shakey. And I do feed him. He eats like that horse they’re always talking about when they should be saying, ‘eats like a dog’.”

Tiffany said, “Well, he sure acts hungry.”

“He’s lying,” Gus said. “He’s a very dishonest dog.”

The three looked at Shakey, who returned a bland guiltless expression. Gus had to respect Shakey’s pretense of innocence, since Shakey had acquired the skill from Gus.’

“High Jingo would also make a really amazing movie! /LEJ”

Riveting Tales from Max Cossack – Walking Creek World