Scott Adams died on Tuesday at the age of 68.
The creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip had battled prostate cancer for many years. His death was announced via a pre-prepared statement he had written. Adam’s ex-wife Shelly read the announcement during a livestream.
“I had an amazing life,” Adams wrote in the statement. “I gave it everything I had.”
“Dilbert” debuted in 1989. Adams drew on his experience as a bank teller and manager at a phone company Pacific Bell for inspiration, skewering corporate jargon and middle management. The comics that began as office doodles during boring meetings grew into an empire for Adams with companion books, a short-lived animated show and an ill-fated burrito line. The strip reached a peak syndication of more than 2,000 newspapers in 2013.
Adams lost more than half of those contracts in 2023, when he made racist comments on his podcast. Discussing a controversial Rasmussen Reports poll which reported that 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white,” Adams called Black Americans a “hate group.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people,” he said.
Adams later called his comments “hyperbole,” but they were not the first instance of the comic writer courting controversy. In 2006, Adams questioned the accuracy of the Holocaust death toll on his blog. In 2011, he wrote that “women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone.”
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An avid Donald Trump supporter, Adams reflected on the fallout from his vocal conservatism in October.
“I sacrificed everything. I sacrificed my social life. I sacrificed my career. I sacrificed my reputation. I may have sacrificed my health. And I did that because I believed it was worth it,” he said on his podcast.
Trump praised Adams on Truth Social, calling him a “fantastic guy” who “will be truly missed.”
“Sadly, the Great Influencer, Scott Adams, has passed away. He was a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so,” he wrote. “He bravely fought a long battle against a terrible disease. My condolences go out to his family, and all of his many friends and listeners.”
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