Dummy and Dummier

Dilbert's Back, and Guess Why UPN's Got Him

Comments (0) By Tom Carson Tuesday, Jan 26 1999

The cultural moment that let the strip pass for incisive was as specific as a snowflake—one of those rare interludes when, in this case thanks to downsizing and NAFTA, suspicion of corporate America was in vogue among nonpinkos. But its avatar was Pat Buchanan, a spokesman not for empowerment but for revanchism. In ways the series's longueurs give you plenty of time to mull, Dilbert's ostensible populism harkens to classic angry-white-male bile. Not only is Dilbert no assembly-line laborer, he's not even a clerk: he's an engineer. Yet the locus of class resentment in this country has traditionally been petit-bourgeois rather than proletarian, one reason its manifestations tend to be reactionary even when the petit bourgeoisie wears a blue collar. Adams's treatment of women adds a vicious physical disgust to his usual scorn, and even on the comics pages—which make prime time look like multiculti heaven—his workplace's all-vanilla cast jumps out at you. The one possible exception is subliminal—the petty tyrant known as "the Pointy-Haired Boss," whose twin horns of kinky black hair, in a strip so short on individuating attributes that each one functions talismanically, keep striking my eye, at least, as suggestively African American. I know, I know: aw, lighten up. Still, I wonder just who Adams thinks is keeping who down.