That would be Scott Adams. Aging artist of the Dilbert comic strip who has turned into a brain-dead slug and all around reprehensible person.
At least we can take solace in the fact that more and more people are coming to understand how loathsome he is, as both a political prognosticator and as a human being.
Al Capp was the worst human being ever to have a syndicated comic strip but Dilbert guy is making a run for the money. https://t.co/n9nNb1NCyP
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) October 3, 2017
I have not thought of Al Capp in many years, but Mr. Heer’s comparison is quite apt. Scott Adams and Al Capp have a lot of similarities ending up with the same conclusion, they both are sorry specimens of humanity.
For those who don’t know who Mr. Capp is, here is a refresher: “Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li’l Abner, which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an’ Slats (in the years 1937–45) and Long Sam (1954). He won the National Cartoonists Society‘s Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, posthumously for his “unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning.””
He was a superb artist and a pretty lousy person by all accounts.
No doubt about it: Al Capp engaged in depraved behavior. Most disgraceful was his attempted rape of a number of women, from college co-eds to Grace Kelly. And, as the interview below suggests, there may be more. Capp also created Li’l Abner, once one of America’s most acclaimed comic strips. It began in 1934, the Depression era, and was centered on the fictional, dirt-poor Appalachian town inhabited mostly by innocent yokels and conniving scoundrels. At its best, it ridiculed the powerful and pompous in politics and culture with shrewd insight, rollicking humor, and a distinctly lush, elegant drawing style.
Capp was exceptionally smart, and an astute observer, so I suspect he had at least some awareness he was becoming a mirror image of his monstrous enemy. But if so, I don’t think he cared much. After his youth he didn’t seem eager to make close friends. He was misanthropic and self-loathing, so what did it really matter? That he had defeated or destroyed his enemies was the point.
It’s apparent to you, myself, and some others that Capp evolved very much into a miserly egomaniac, one with the crude lusts for women, and the insatiable need for fame and attention that marked Ham Fisher. Capp deeply resented how Fisher had treated him as an assistant—with good reason—and Capp, by and large, treated his own assistants very well. But in his later years Capp turned on some of them with a vengeance. He even stoutly denied to an interviewer that Frank Frazetta, a decade long employee, had ever worked on Abner.
And then this happened:
In 1971, columnist Jack Anderson, based on the reporting of his young assistant Brit Hume, broke the news that Capp had made unwelcomed sexual advances to four female students at the University of Alabama, which campus officials hushed up.
Shortly afterward, Capp was charged with indecent exposure and sodomy after a visit to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He pleaded guilty to attempted adultery and paid a $500 fine. Schumacher and Kitchen write, “A career four decades in the making had taken a severe hit from which it would never recover.”
Reminds me of a current day comic strip artist and fanatical Trump supporter. Who can’t take any criticism of that decision whatsoever. ( His block list is long and distinguished).
After all, how demented does one have to be to do this?
The creator of Dilbert is spreading a rumor that Stephen Paddock’s brother might be a crisis actor pic.twitter.com/idhiiMuz5r
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017
Not surprising really. This is the guy that thinks Trump is a great leader. When of course the last 10 months have proven exactly the opposite. And still, he remains an unrepentant Trump supporter-like the rest of the deluded herd.
But he would have like Mr. Capp I think.
Scott Adams (born 1957) is a “trained hypnotist”[3] and cartoonist known for Dilbert, a long-running satirical comic strip about a white-collar office worker in America. His blog, which is currently a fascinating study of a man going insane,[4]attracted some major media attention during the 2016 election. Long before that, he advanced a number of crank positions, including questioning evolution and the validity of the fossil record.