Can't understand the haircut? It's Maude Frickert!

I'm seeing Scott Adams assert "I can't get past the haircut."

He's looking at this:

🔥BREAKING: Media Matters is on the brink of collapse.

After two decades of smearing conservatives, the Soros-funded attack dog is under siege—from lawsuits by @elonmusk, FTC probes, & state AG investigations. Why? Donor fraud, defamation, & LYING to destroy Twitter.

Thread🧵 pic.twitter.com/LfYzbt7Rsb

— Rod D. Martin (@RodDMartin) July 30, 2025

I'm seeing Maude Frickert:

Sorry about the sexism! I just wanted you to see the wig Jonathan Winters wore back in the 1960s.

"I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has... that has also spread to my bones.... My life expectancy is: maybe this summer...."

Coffee With Scott Adams 5/19/25 https://t.co/miG4jySdsD

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 19, 2025

"Weirdly, since it's old news for me, I've just sort of processed it.... And I have to say, you know, everybody has to die... and it's kind of civilized that you know about how long you have...."

"Your brain knows bullshit," said Joe Rogan.

"You could kind of bullshit someone for an hour, but... hour two and hour three.... that's when the real you comes out.... How much are you bullshitting the world?...[T]he narrative about Trump has always been that he's bullshitting everybody.... But that's him, that's the, the guy's right there. You could talk to him about everything and anything. He's right there.... Your brain knows bullshit...."

Context (from the full transcript at Podscribe, which I edited a bit for accuracy):

Larry Charles talks to Marc Maron about Scott Adams and Bob Dylan.

This is an excellent episode of Marc Maron's podcast, with Larry Charles talking about "Seinfeld," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Borat," and his new movie "Dicks: The Musical," but what I'm writing this post to highlight is something that surprised me: a discussion of Scott Adams, which is followed immediately by a discussion of Bob Dylan.

This isn't random opining about celebrities. Larry Charles worked with Scott Adams to develop the TV show "Dilbert." And Larry Charles directed the movie "Masked and Anonymous," which he co-wrote with Bob Dylan.

Start at about 1:23:00 in the podcast and you'll be at the first mention of "Dilbert," which prompts Maron to ask, "What do you think of that guy going a little off? Did you see that coming?"

"[O]n March 13, Adams plans to launch 'Dilbert Reborn' on his subscription site, Locals."

"The first strips will feature his character Ratbert as a 'context removing editor' at a media outlet that spoofs newspapers like The Post, he said via text. (He declined a request for an extended interview.)..."

I'm reading "The bewildering descent of Scott Adams and ‘Dilbert’/‘I shook the box intentionally,’ Scott Adams told The Post about the comments that prompted newspapers to drop his comic strip" (WaPo).

"When California was drawing up its Constitution to join the Union, the state debated excluding Black people."

"The delegate who brought forth an exclusion resolution said that with migrating free Black people, the state could find itself 'flooded with a population of free Negroes,' which would be 'the greatest calamity that could befall California.' In that way, what [Scott] Adams said, while racist, was less outside the bounds of America’s troubled ideological canon and more in step with it on the question of having a functional, egalitarian, pluralistic society."

The last 2 paragraphs of "The ‘Dilbert’ Cartoonist and the Durability of White-Flight Thinking" by Charles Blow (in the NYT).

They cancelled Roseanne Barr for a lot less.

I don’t agree with everything Scott says, but Dilbert is legit funny & insightful.

We should stop canceling comedy!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2023

"Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk defended Scott Adams... in a series of tweets Sunday, blasting media organizations for dropping his comic strip..."

I'm reading "Musk defends 'Dilbert' creator, says media is 'racist against whites'/The Tesla and Twitter chief blasted media outlets for dropping Scott Adams’s comic strip after the cartoonist’s rant against Black people" by Will Oremus (WaPo).

Replying to tweets about the controversy, Musk said it is actually the media that is “racist against whites & Asians.”... 

In further tweets Sunday, Musk agreed with a tweet that said “Adams’ comments weren’t good” but there’s “an element of truth” to them, and suggested in a reply that media organizations promote a “false narrative” by giving more coverage to unarmed Black victims of police violence than they do to unarmed White victims of police violence.... 

Here's the Musk tweet, responding to someone who tweeted that the MSM had concluded that Adams is racist:

"Newspapers across the United States have pulled... 'Dilbert'... after the cartoonist called Black Americans a 'hate group' and said White people should 'get the hell away from' them...."

"The once widely celebrated cartoonist, who has been entertaining extreme-right ideologies and conspiracy theories for several years, was upset Wednesday by a Rasmussen poll that found a thin majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement 'It’s okay to be White.'... [O]n his YouTube show Saturday... [Scott Adams] offered a long, quasi-Socratic defense of his comments, which he said were taken out of context, and seemed to define racism as essentially any political activity. 'Any tax code change is racist,' he said at one point in the show. He denounced racism against 'individuals' and racist laws, but said, 'You should absolutely be racist whenever it’s to your advantage. Every one of you should be open to making a racist personal career decision.' In the same show, Adams suggested that he had done irreparable harm to a once-sterling career. 'Most of my income will be gone by next week,' he told about 3,000 live-stream viewers. 'My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this, am I right? There’s no way you can come back from this.'"

 
From "'Dilbert' dropped by The Post, other papers, after cartoonist’s racist rant" (WaPo).

Here is today's episode, the one with what WaPo calls "a long, quasi-Socratic defense." You can judge for yourself:

"Mr. Musk bought Twitter because he’s a Twitter addict and, more specifically, an extremely online attention addict."

"On his first day at Twitter he hauled around a bathroom sink to make an obscure, very online joke likely poking fun at a certain earnest kind of Twitter user (usually a liberal) who posts something appalling but also banal and says, 'Let that sink in.' The graph of Mr. Musk’s Twitter posts over his time on the platform looks like the hockey stick graph of global temperature. He can’t stop himself. This is someone with millions of followers who is deep in the bowels of his own replies and mentions, clearly spending inordinate amounts of time looking at what people are saying about him. I can tell you from experience that this is a path to madness...."

Writes Chris Hayes, in "Why I Want Twitter to Live" (NYT).

1. Thanks to Hayes for explaining the "Let that sink in" joke so clearly. I nearly lost my mind trying to listen to Scott Adams explain it as a reference to the expression "Everything but the kitchen sink." And it wasn't even a kitchen sink, Scott. It was a bathroom sink. 

"Maybe this will end the 'Dennis the Menace' reign of terror. I've read it every day for fifty years and haven't laughed yet."

That made me laugh, from the comments section of "Is the print newspaper comics page in trouble?" (WaPo).

That comment prompts someone else to say: "Insert GenX rant about 'Family Circus' from the 1999 movie 'Go.'" Okay, I will insert it:

Ha ha. That reminds me of a famous thing somebody once said about the comic strip "Nancy": "It's harder not to read 'Nancy' than to read it."

The article has some material about Scott Adams — whose strip was cut from 77 Lee Enterprises newspapers and who has had individual daily strips censored in other newspapers. 

Adams had recently satirized environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies and workplace diversity efforts, and had introduced a Black character named Dave who identifies as White....

Some commenters are taking shots at him, including this: "To be fair, Scott Adams also went crazy seven years ago and stopped being funny when he started being political... not unlike Charles Schultz stopping being funny when he started being religious, or the Family Circus guy stopping being funny when he drew his first comic, which has been repeated twice a week for the last century." 

Scott Adams madly loves his dog, but "she lowers the quality of my life by 40%."

"It really is terrible to live with a dog.... You just can't live and work in a house that has a dog. 'Cause the trouble is: I have too much empathy...."

He says he goes on vacation to get away from his house — which is a burden — and his dog — who is always needy and who is his prisoner. "Every moment I'm not playing with her, she's in jail."

"It's horrible having a dog. I so don't recommend it."

"Searching for a strategy to avoid a 2022 midterm disaster, advisers to President Biden have discussed elevating a unifying Republican foil not named Donald Trump...."

"Biden confidants worry that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is too unknown, that Biden won't demonize Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell because of their longstanding and collegial relationship and that elevating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could backfire.... [S]ome Biden advisers are reluctant to contest every midterm race on DeSantis' signature issue — COVID-19 — because the Biden administration's approaches on vaccine and mask mandates may be a political liability with some swing voters.... [T]here's close to a consensus that Democrats can't hold Congress by focusing on Trump.... Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told Axios: 'I wish that we could just find one face that we could point to, such as with Donald Trump... maybe a composite.'"

Axios analyzes.

Here's the TV Tropes article on "composite characters." 

Certain media, including Real Life, tend to have the time and space to utilize Loads and Loads of Characters, a large number of individuals with significant and/or necessary contributions to the storyline. But in an adaptation it can be difficult to offer adequate time and space.... A solution is to invoke artistic license and compress two or more such figures into a single character with traits drawn from all of them.... Instead of having three different smart guys on the team divided up into distinct fields, you make one of them an Omnidisciplinary Scientist and discard the others....

I don't know how well that will transfer into political discourse, but here's something about "Dilbert":

Dilbert revived LOUD HOWARD, a character who'd proved quite popular with readers of the strip but who the author thought was too flat to make much use of. To make him more interesting, the show merged him with Nervous Ted and had him shout constantly about trivial worries. 

How many Republicans would you have to merge into a composite character as useful to demonize as Donald Trump?

Sounds? I listened to the sound and paid no attention to the substance, and the answer is clearly "no."

How many of you think this Rogue Doctor sounds credible? https://t.co/dqcEOoMXwe

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 14, 2021

People are telling Scott Adams to "kill his cat."

Gotta love all the people commenting to tell Scott to kill his cat by putting it down and to just donate the money...his money! And then proceed to tell him that he would feel better...

Wow just wow

— Adam W (@AdamBoBadam3440) September 23, 2021

Scott Adams deploys his 4-point test for lying.

I don't know who is right, but one of these people checked four boxes for lying:

1. Word-thinking ("not gain of function")
2. Attack the critic personally
3. Change the topic
4. Anger when trapped https://t.co/AhR8vgoJjw

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 21, 2021

ADDED: If you click through to Weinstein's series of tweets, you'll read a very sensible interpretation that seems right to me:

Scott Adams and Glenn Greenwald punch down at Just Jess.

Just Jess is a woman on Twitter with less than 10,000 followers, but she said something that got a reaction:

So... turns out the new friend I went on vacation with doesn't believe there was an insurrection. So... vacation over 4 days early. Friendship way over. Mind blown.

I can't tell what this "new friend" did. Did she think there was no breach of the Capitol at all or was she getting semantic about the word "insurrection"? 

Anyway... I thought it was interesting that both Scott Adams and Glenn Greenwald reacted.

Adams's reaction is pithy and funny, but he's using a tight definition of "insurrection" that exaggerates the extremism of Just Jess. He tweets:

Never go on vacation with someone who believes you can conquer a superpower by occupying a room in the Capitol.

I admire the humor technique of switching the perspective to that of the new friend. She shouldn't want to be stuck in close quarters with Jess. 

By the way, isn't it always a bad idea to go on a vacation with a new friend — at least if you're going to be stuck in a car or a hotel room with this person for many long hours? You don't know whether you'll bug each other or be any good at navigating around arguments.

Greenwald is not so funny. He barrels straight into the official humor format of the internet, sarcasm — heavy, obvious sarcasm:

Immediately terminate all friendships with anyone who sees the world differently than you see it -- especially politics. Much healthier that way never to have your views questioned or challenged by anyone near you.

What if you had to go on a cross-country road trip with one of these 3 — Glenn, Scott, or Jess? Well, I think the first choice is quite clear, but I'll hold back my response for now and give you a chance to vote:

You must drive cross-country with Glenn Greenwald, Scott Adams, or Just Jess. Assume they're all good drivers. Who do you pick?

Glenn. Second choice: Scott.

Glenn. Second choice: Jess.

Scott. Second choice: Glenn.

Scott. Second choice: Jess.

Jess. Second choice: Glenn.

Jess: Second choice: Scott.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Management move.

In one of the greatest management moves of all time, Basecamp's CEO persuaded all of his most grindingly annoying employees to resign at once. .https://t.co/BUUhnfU691

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 1, 2021

ADDED: Madtownguy writes: 

I followed a rabbit trail from the post on Basecamp by way of Scott Adams' tweet. Aside from the NYT article, I found this on Medium. The "Pyramid of Hate" is an infographic promoted by the Anti-Defamation League to show how microaggressions can build a foundation for genocide.

I see some similarities between that diagram and one promoted last year on social media about so-called 'critical thinking.' There's a write-up of materials, including that infographic, here. There used to be a link to the actual document but it's not apparent in my searches, so it may have served its purpose and been memory holed. What struck me about the document is that the first question it asked was "Who does it benefit?" Knowing it was shared by a relative who is strongly partisan, I wondered if the point was to automatically exclude any information that would help the user's political opponents.

Then I found an article that promoted the intersectionality of critical thinking and critical theory. From the article:

"States call for critical thinking embedded within the curriculum, but to what extent does that encompass critical theory elements? Can you integrate critical theory into school curricula without embedding critical thinking? I think not. Critical theory conceptualizations forces one to look outside one’s paradigm and question societal norms and look beyond the veil that has been drawn to see the reality of injustice amongst many that live in our communities, societies, and the world."

I'm amazed that the writer is so willing to question societal norms but apparently unwilling to question her own biases. That's why I see this type of infographic as a tool for propaganda.

Scott Adams gets into a conversation with China state-affiliated media.

Slave labor? https://t.co/jE5ZpzdF9y

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 8, 2021

I'd love to visit your famous Uyghurs training facilities to see how China gets things done. Can you also give me a tour of the Fentanyl production facilities that killed George Floyd and my stepson? https://t.co/BmZCOuarLO

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 8, 2021

FROM THE EMAIL: A reader named Mike writes (and I haven't fact checked the history): 

China lies. The Central Pacific Railroad was built by free labor. The Chinese laborers were highly valued employees, in fact the CP couldn’t get enough of them. They knew how to use blasting powder, they worked without the hullabaloo that the white, Irish workers created. They didn’t drink and carouse. At one time they... quit and started working for another company.

Plus the fact we’d just fought a four-year war to end slavery.

See Stephen Ambrose’s “Nothing Like It in The World.” Great book about building the transcontinental railroad.

MORE FROM THE EMAIL: A reader named Daniel writes:

I think Scott Adams wasted an opportunity -- he caught Chinese attention, but he was more interested in making domestic points to domestic audiences than in calling out the Chinese. Randomly bringing up George Floyd using fentanyl is not about calling out the Chinese. And by the way, we've got our own problems with fentanyl behavior, between Purdue, McKinsey, over-prescribing doctors and over-dispensing pharmacies. I'd call it a big loss by Adams.

Adams seems to take every opportunity to castigate China over Fentanyl. I wouldn't have brought in George Floyd. There's an ongoing trial, and the key question seems to be whether it's possible that Fentanyl and not Derek Chauvin's knee was the cause of the death. Adams is deliberately writing as if we know the answer, and I guess that's the "thinking past the sale" type of persuasion he frequently talks about. I'm sure some of Adams's followers get off on that sort of thing.

There's also this from RigelDog: 

Like you, Adams produces content every day but in the form of a podcast. He's got a pretty big audience. It may interest you to know that he considers Chinese government to be not only the enemy of the free world, but also his, Adams', personal enemy. He openly vows to take them down in any way that he can. Looks like he is making some headway and getting some (dangerous?) attention.

He must love this.

YET MORE EMAIL: Christian writes:

Looking at China and the slavery situation, we can see how so many for so long countenanced what they even the called the evil "institution" of plantation slavery. It's not the same thing, but the dynamics are similar, and the stakes even higher, with the potential benefit to the USA lower than ever. 

The South declared war over the presence of someone they thought was a threat to slavery. If we actually managed to put real economic hurt on China (or maybe just threatened enough to push them over the edge), who's to say war with millions of Chinese and hundreds of thousands of US/allies lives won't be the cost? 

And unless we impossibly managed a modern day Sherman's March from the sea across inland China to pacify the country, we wouldn't end up making anyone more free. To say nothing of the devastating generational consequences of war across economy, government growth, families, etc. The toll is much higher than the casualty count, which would be unimaginable. 

So we do the calculations - are the wealth and prosperity gains from doing business with a bad nation, while also preventing conflict, worth permitting a terrible "institution" to continue. It's not just a question of "money". We don't develop the next MRI machine without high profit margins and high sales volumes that come from overseas manufacturing a wide range of goods across the whole economy. 

We may say one thing to assuage our conscience. But our actions demonstrate with clarity how we truly feel.

Isn't this how to do Critical Race Theory? You always ask — about anything — Isn't it racist? That's the method.

Isn't it racist to require vaccination passports when so many Black citizens don't have government IDs? If you don't have ID, how can you prove it was you who got vaccinated?

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 1, 2021