[.ca] The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the ... (ISBN 1567511325)

Ugh!:
First off, let's get this straight: I would consider myself something of a socialist, or at least VERY liberal. I voted for Ralph Nader. And I believe that in some ways, Mr. Solomon is correct. HOWEVER, criticizing a comic is a pretty silly way to go about it. Especially when most of the time, he uses quotes that are taken out of context of what Mr. Adams REALLY meant to say. I think it's pretty silly to think that anyone is "in favor" of corporate downsizing...especially someone who has worked in the corporate world for as long as Scott Adams did. It begs the question: How long has Mr. Solomon worked in the corporate world? Perhaps instead of slandering cartoons that anyone, socialist or not, would normally consider funny, he should go write some angry letters to the editor over at the Daily Worker. Maybe they'll be more responsive. But I doubt it.

Solomon misses by multiple miles:
Several years ago there was a British lecturer who, in order to win a competition for the most boring lecturer of the year, wrote -and delivered- a Marxist analysis of a fairly ordinary joke about a coconut. The lecture went on for several highly tedious hours. Mr Solomon's "attack" on Dilbert and Scott Adams reminds me of that lecture. Mr Solomon makes an error common to many so-called media critics. They over-value their own importance and fail to identify terrible faults in themselves. Whilst, mysteriously, being able to see minor (or imaginary) faults in others. Mr Solomon further attacks Scott Adams for making money from his intellectual properties. Mr Solomon's attack on Mr Adams would, therefore, only be valid if he criticises from the position of a man who writes entirely for free. Unless Mr Solomon does work for financial reward? In that case it would be very easy to dismiss Mr Solomon as a self-serving hypocrit and to ignore anything else he has to say on any subject. For people night suspect that "once a self-serving hypocrit..." But that would be an unfair attack on Mr Solomon,would it not? Almost in the same way that Mr Solomon made an unfair attack on Mr Adams.

Scott Adams has the ability to highlight corporate flaws:
Scott Adams has the uncanny ability to highlight corporate flaws accurately and amusingly, though not necessarily in that order. He is at his best when using humor to laugh at the managers and employees in large organizations. Yet he has his critics. The loudest criticism comes from a self-confessed enemy of management, Norman Solomon, who discovered, belatedly, that Adams is not a fellow traveler. Adams has been such so successful criticizing managers, that many are shocked to find him in favor of efficiency. Large organizations create work for themselves, and people working in them know this. This has always been a Dilbert theme, along with the idea that whole departments could disappear, and not be noticed by the end customer. Adams was criticized for greed, cynicism and hypocrisy. In his words "this hurt because in my heart I know I am only greedy and cynical."

Ironically, This Is Shameless Exploitation:
First off, I agree with a lot of the author's opinions of "Dilbert" and its creator. But this book is pretty poor. Its crimes: 1) IT CRITIQUES THE STRIP ONLY INDIRECTLY. Most of the author's arguments discuss only the strip in general or on the cartoonist's views from his non-strip books. I only recall one direct "quote" of a Dilbert strip in the whole book. 2) WEAK ARGUMENTS. One of the books central arguments, for instance, is that the strip never attacks owners, just upper management in the form of the "Pointy Haired Boss." Now, anyone who reads the strip knows that the Boss can be anything from a lowly supervisor to the CEO depending on the gag. And besides that, I can think of several strips off the top of my head that directly attacked stupid, unfair owners. 3) IT'S A THIN, THIN POLEMIC. Readers will note the author is far more interested in talking politics than Dilbert itself. In fact, I suspect that he simply centered the book around Dilbert simply to attract attention and sell more copies, meaning he's guilty of the same shameless marketing he accuses Addams of. 4) IT'S FUNNY AS A CRUTCH! A good critic of humor should at least convey the idea that he understands humor. But this guy is as dry as plain toast. You walk away wondering if he even has a concept of humor. Now for the good points: 1) an okay intro by cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, who IS funny; 2) a guest chapter by a humorist who isn't funny here, but who does seem to understand the strip; and 3) a good concluding chapter that turns out to be all that the author really has to say about the whole thing. I don't usually go into this much detail, but I read this book just to fulfill a promise, and it was one of the harder promises I kept in my life.

I don't read Dilbert anymore - but Solomon isn't the reason:
About three years ago, I bought a Dilbert-a-day desk calendar. Every day I ripped aside the previous day to reveal today's comic. It was great up until around August or so, when I realized that Dilbert was still stuck in his cubicle, and so was I, and I couldn't stand the thought of having my nose rubbed in it every day for the next four months. I threw the calendar away. In "The Trouble with Dilbert," Solomon professes to have "cracked the code" of Dilbert comics, revealing that Dilbert is actually intended to keep workers complacent. This hurt Scott Adams' feelings, as Norman was accusing him of acting in the best interests of everything he stood against. Who's right? Both of them. If one considers the entire body of Dilbert comics as one very large text, then it may seem significant that the protagonist (Dilbert) does not evolve as a character. By all rights, a protagonist should be affected by their experiences, and if they steadfastly remain constant, then one must assume there's a good reason for it. The most facile conclusion one might reach is that the character hasn't changed because the character likes things just the way they are. One might then take the extra step, add a dollop of good old-fashioned paranoia, and assume that Scott Adams intends Dilbert to serve as an example. To subliminally assert that "Things are just fine" would indeed, make Scott Adams a tool. Quite a loathsome tool, to boot, because he's clever enough to disguise this message in what seems (to the uncritical eye) to be a scathing daily condemnation of corporate politics and practices. But here's where things fall apart: Dilbert does not evolve because he is a character IN A COMIC STRIP. I don't say this to mean "it's too trivial to analyze" - that's simply not true. I say this because a standard convention of the art form known as the comic strip is that its characters do not evolve. If comics were expected to behave like proper literary texts, then Garfield would have been put to sleep years ago, after suffering from incontinence, arthritis, deafness, cataracts, and kidney disease (not necessarily in that order). Jeffy would be a card-carrying member of the AARP, and Andy Capp would be either incarcerated for spousal abuse or knifed to death in his sleep, take your pick. Dilbert caught on quick and big because it says funny things about familiar situations. Cubicle-dwellers (like myself) were hooked on Dilbert after that first shock of recognition; the "Oh my god, that's EXACTLY what it's like here!" Recognition provides comfort, and Dilbert reassures most people that they're not the only ones made miserable by corporate life. In short, Dilbert feels your pain. Scott Adams feels your pain, too. He's put in his cubicle hours, and honed his insight and humor to a keen edge through years of personal experience. Scott Adams knows just what it's like, and he wants you to feel better. His job is to coax a laugh out of millions of people every day (and he gets paid rather well for it, to boot). I've almost entirely switched from Dilbert comics to Scott Adams books. Adams has written several books - BOOK books, not just collections of comic strips - which serve as roadmaps to cubicle life, complete with helpful tour suggestions. I have gradually molded my work life into a perfect expression of Adams Fu (translates as "The Way of Adams"), gleaned primarily from "The Joy of Work," which is one of my favorites. In his books, Adams essentially advocates screwing the company any way you can. A full third of "The Joy of Work" is devoted to various strategies you can use to buy yourself free time at the office. I can whole-heartedly attest to the efficacy of these strategies, as I use several of them in conjunction to buy myself roughly four hours of free time every day. At Adams' suggestion, I have studiously put this time to good use; for example, I'm currently using my free time to write this very essay. If one considers Dilbert in the full context of Scott Adams, then no, Dilbert is not a tool of the corporate elite. And yet I don't read Dilbert anymore. I just can't; even the occasionally half-glimpsed Dilbert comic makes me want to curl up on the bathroom floor and cry. If I could take over Scott Adams' brain (and drawing hand), I would create a story arc wherein Dilbert escapes corporate life once and for all. He strikes out on his own and carves a new niche for himself. Several years pass, and one day he returns to his old office to taunt Pointy-Haired Boss. Maybe Dilbert (no longer shackled by notions of corporate propriety or threats of political retaliation) drops his pants and moons the PHB in front of the entire staff. Maybe he sets fire to the building (a la Stephen Root in "Office Space"). I haven't exactly worked that part out yet. I suspect that part of the reason Scott Adams was blindsided by the Solomon's accusation is that the scenario I just spun out is, essentially, the story of Scott Adams' real life. Adams started drawing from his cubicle, and ten years later - presto! - he's king of his own empire. Safely insulated within the happy life he's built for himself, Adams can well afford to look back at cubicle life and laugh. Me, not so much.