When a smart person gains a lot of money and fame, there's a danger that they'll start overestimating their own intelligence. There's an even greater chance that they'll get an inflated sense of their own persuasiveness. Scott Adams, a onetime high school valedictorian and MBA, has long been going down that road, sharing his accumulated wisdom in a way that leads to fights and embarrassing videos. What happened most recently was just that the problem came to a head.
Kat Rosenfield has a good rundown. The way elites have been deliberately trying to degrade racial relations is worthy of discussion. Scott Adams may have been on his way to that point when he tripped over his laces and faceplanted. Will he ever get another chance?
It's true, too, that it's asinine to present a statement like "It's okay to be white" as some kind of litmus test. Like we need fucking permission now? Jesus.
2 comments:
Our first thought when watching the video where Adam's made his comments was that he seemed to be taking a Rasmussen poll seriously when nobody in their right mind takes any poll at face value. Besides that he may have been clumsy in his choice of words, but what I'm sure of is that Scott Adams is no racist. I used to watch his videos every so often when Trump was in office and he can be provocative on purpose - also obnoxious and abrasive. He may well have meant his remarks to be explosive in order to try to awaken Americans to the fact that the cultural, educational, political, and media establishment’s fanatic obsession with race is destroying the country.
Labels like 'black' and 'white' are entirely meaningless.. or used to be. Think of all the mixed race families in the US. I believe what he was saying is that racial madness is what needs to be cancelled.. what was heard was an attack on black people resulting in the faceplant you mention.
Scott Adams definitely thinks a lot of himself but his youtube talks usually go on for 90 minutes or more, enough time for things to be taken out of context. Besides, I suppose being cancelled on the internet doesn't mean much in the real world, especially when one is a multi-multi millionaire.
These days high profile accusations of racism tend to be cynical and self-serving more often than not. Often the accused party has some kind of position that others want and are willing to tar their reputation in order to get. Scott Adams's case is a little different because Dilbert getting dropped by Andrews-McMeel Syndication doesn't seem to have helped anyone else in particular. Also it's based on something he actually did say, in front of millions of witnesses. Yet not only do I not think he's a racist, I don't think anyone else really does either. He was seen as crossing a line and someone else needed to be seen punishing him. What he is is an intelligent man with questionable social skills and a false sense of invulnerability.
A racially mixed society has to let differences and past conflict go if it's going to survive. Unfortunately many see it in their interest to maintain and increase racial conflict and aren't concerned about the effects this is going to have on everyone else.
You can certainly get in trouble for overestimating people's attention spans, and I think that's gotten to be a common occurrence. Not too surprising Adams did as well. And I suppose he does have a better than average chance to recover.
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