This week, according to “Dilbert” comic-strip cartoonist Scott Adams, Lee Enterprises — which has nearly 100 newspapers in the United States — has decided to suspend the use of his comic strip in their papers. The cancellation, Adams said, has had a “substantial” negative impact on his finances.
Why did Lee Enterprises ditch “Dilbert”? Because, in a September 20 comic strip, Adams dared to poke fun at the “woke” culture that has became so pervasive in American society.
ESG — environmental, social, and corporate governance — is a framework designed to be integrated into an organization’s strategy to create enterprise value by expanding the organizational objectives to include the identification, assessment, and management of sustainability related risks and opportunities in respect to all organizational stakeholders (including but not limited to customers, suppliers, and employees) and the environment.
To get a good ESG “score,” companies are expected to promote the view that climate change is real, that it is being caused by human activity, and it is a threat to the planet, needing a massive increase in the power and scope of government to combat it. They are also expected to abide by the progressive principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Finally, membership on corporate boards should have a certain ethnic diversity.
Political diversity is definitely not part of the score. Conservatives, liberatarians, constitutionalists, and Christians are not sought out — on the contrary, they are generally harassed on the job. To progressives, their concept of diversity is a liberal white man, a liberal black man, a liberal woman, a liberal Hispanic, and so on.
“All of the wokeness and anything that permeated from ESG … so that stuff made its way into the business world, and then it became proper content for Dilbert,” Adams said to Fox News. “The problem is that people see that even though it’s a workplace-related joke, but it’s more about how they implement it.”
The specific comic strip that caused Lee Enterprises to nix “Dilbert” was the introduction of a character named Dave, a black man who identifies as a white man. By identifying as white instead of black, Dave is hurting the ESG score of the company, so he is asked by his supervisor to increase the company’s ESG rating by identifying as gay.
When Dave expresses concern about how he is supposed to do that, the boss suggests that he “wear better shirts.” One recent cartoon compares ESG to a “colicky” baby with “firehouse diarrhea.”
“Dilbert” has been drawn by Adams since 1989, and now boasts inclusion in thousands of newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages.
The cancellation of “Dilbert” by several newspapers illustrates that the Left is largely humorless. Just witness the degeneration of The Tonight Show, which became a television show that many Americans watched to end their day, when Steve Allen, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, and Jay Leno were the hosts. Under Jimmy Fallon, however, the show has taken on a partisan slant in favor of progressive causes. Even worse is The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which is less of a comedy and variety show and more a political show targeting former President Donald Trump with comments that are more hateful than funny.
Back in Carson’s heyday, it was not uncommon for people to repeat his opening monologue jokes the next day at their workplace. And the late-night shows also used humor to poke fun at societal issues. For example, a Carol Burnett Show skit had Vicki Lawrence posing as a mother with a newborn and being asked whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Lawrence responded, “This is 1970. This baby will decide that when it is 21.”
No joke like that would be allowed today. Of course, today — 2022 — the infant would not be expected to wait until 21 to make a life-altering decision, such as submitting to mutilation of its genitals or breasts, as the case may be, but in some places in the United States, young children can decide such things without parental permission or even involvement.
Today, it is considered politically incorrect — with potential job ramifications — to laugh when a man says he is really a woman, or a woman says she is really a man. We used to relegate individuals who were under the delusion that he or she was Jesus, Napoleon, or some other famous historical person to a mental institution. Now, it is often required that an individual call that person by whatever pronoun — he, she, they, etc. — the person has chosen, rather than the one their biological sex would indicate.
Interestingly, however, many of the same radicals who object to parents upset about the teaching of Marxist Critical Race Theory in schools, arguing that such is censorship, celebrate the cancellation and censorship of comedians, business owners, and even comic-strip artists — if they dare challenge the radical Woke culture.
Ridiculing Christians is acceptable “humor” to the Left, but joking about “woke” culture is not.
