Recent Comments

1. 4 days ago on Clay Bennett

   You are now arguing semantics. In either the original post or in the other answers I gave here about this subject it is quite clear what I really mean. And as stated… Having paid for a service, and having received that service (the comics INCLUDING Dilbert) for years – for suppliers to have decided to cut him out of the mix ONLY because of who he is – they were effectively depriving me of my right to receive what I had originally paid for. It is – if you prefer an analogy – paying for Netflix and for years getting a service which includes “detective films” -when suddenly the Twitterverse decides that “detective films are bad for kiddies”, so two weeks after I have paid my entire year’s subscription (as that is the way it works for my comix) – Netflix decides to remove all traces of detective films from the mix. I was expecting all of the same kinds of films, including detective films which I particularly like – and now I can’t get them any more; so my “right” has been minimized… and again, specifically for the WRONG reason, and without any sense of true principle.

2. 5 days ago on Clay Bennett

   Calling me a “big baby” can make you feel superior, but it doesn’t excuse your total incapacity for understanding the idea of principle:Of course a newspaper has a right to publish or not publish what it likes. But there is such a thing as having good reasons – based on principle, and bad reasons, based on convenience. Same for firing someone. If they are doing a bad JOB… go ahead and you will hear not a peep out of me.

   But what if people had been complaining that the person was Black, or gay, or a woman, and they preferred White and Straight. SHOULD a paper bend to public opinion ONLY – or should it go with principle? You don’t keep a person BECAUSE they are Black or gay or whatever – you keep them because they do a good job. PERIOD. Capisch? That wasn’t SO hard to understand, once the shoe is on the other foot, is it?

   Supposing Adams had never given that interview and nobody was aware of his Fascist attitudes. Nobody was complaining about his strip. It was popular – and for a reason. It was edgy, it was funny, it was thought-provoking; What more could anyone ask for from a comic strip?

   The ONLY reason he was let go is for who he is, NOT because his WORK is objectionable. And from that point on, we are faced with that famous statement attributed (incorrectly ) to Voltaire: I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It.Or, we can take the easy way out, follow the Twitter universe, and lose all our integrity.Before you sneeringly call someone a “big baby”, you might take the time to understand what is really being said.

3. 6 days ago on Clay Bennett

   Not a good analogy for many reasons. First, I don’t see the comics in a specific newspaper, I see them through an app which accumulates all the possibilities and allows me to choose among them what I want to see. It was available, Now Dilbert has been removed from that app. I have NO way of seeing it except on Dilbert;com (which has now removed it more or less too…) So am I to give up the entire app for ONE comic? No… But the reason for the comic disappearing has nothing to do with his competence as a cartoonist, nor whether or not his cartoon is appreciated. It ONLY has to do with the person being vilified for comments he has made. That is like removing all Michelangelo’s works because they are too “homoerotic” tnot too much for teh Vaican but that’s another discussion!) or refusing to keep Harry Potter in the library because some people don’t like comments made by the author about trans people. It amounts to throwing out the baby with the bathwater!Your idea about the clothing store is also not valid. I did not discover the app and then ask why X comic doesn’t appear. Dilbert WAS part of the selection, and was one of the first that I made sure I was receiving automatically every day. So to make your analogy about a clothing store more appropriate, we would have to imagine a clothing store which sold me a suit, told me to come back for several fittings, and suddenly the suit I was expecting was no longer available. I had paid for it but they decided suddenly that they didn’t like the style and no longer wanted to be associated with it – even though it had already been bought. That a clothing store doesn’t carry a colour or style is NOT my complaint; that a clothing store will suddenly decide not to sell something any more only because of pressure on it by outside factors that have nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with a Mafia telling them to stop… well, yes, I would continue to say that this is not an acceptable reason.

4. 6 days ago on Clay Bennett

   Ah! How dare anyone care about censorship is what you are really saying here.

5. 15 days ago on Jeff Stahler

   The Bible and the Koran teach love, but ALSO hate and violence. God stirkes people dead for not believing (having an open mind and questioning). The Christian Bible preaches love but condemns people who do not believe; Buddha comes closer to real love – IN THEORY. But the problem with all these religions is that in order to really believe, you need to believe that YOUR system is right – and the corollary is that the others are wrong. When an Orothdox Jew sees a Reform Jewish lesbian rabbi, he is mortified. So it is even within the same religion that the factions begin;. Certain Christian groups splinter simply because their own denies “love” to people who are gay. Do you know where bigotry and hatred are the lowest? Among atheists; Gee, what a surprise! Or, if you go back far enough, to the ancient greeks and Romans who had a whole slew of Gods whose antics would all be condemned by today’s religions. The ancient gods slept with each other wityhout paying attention to what sex they were; they even had sex with animals; They felt jealousy, anger, and killed each other if they could at times. Well, when the Gods act like this – it allows humans to also have their desires, be they perverse, without being told that they will be condemned to hellfire forever. Do you think a “child molester” in Ancient Greece was shunned and jailed or killed? Nope, the entire idea was institutionalized and considered as a duty to help children grow into adults. Fathers handed their sons to close friends who mentored, educated (and had sex with) the young boys… and nobody seemed to be worse for wear; For generatons. So OUR problem with pediphillia is a social one – learned as it were. I could go on forever – but the main pont here is that in one way or another – desite being able yto cherry-pick positives in religious dogma – the practitioners of these religons are all basically barbaric.

6. 16 days ago on Jeff Stahler

   Thank God! haha!

7. 16 days ago on Jeff Stahler

   They’d be cheaper, too!

8. 16 days ago on Jeff Stahler

   Not necessarily… they become priests!

9. 17 days ago on Chip Bok

   Yes, Dilbert is still found on the Dilbert.com site. Perniciousness is not complete!

10. 17 days ago on Jeff Stahler

    The Republican Party is in such a state of denial, they refuse reality almost as much as the religious. Oh, right – they are often the same people! So they’ve had years of practice, ever since childhood. “Give me a child for the first 7 years and he’ll be a Catholic/Jew/Muslim/ Buddhist/ etc for life”! (to paraphrase Aristotle – and later the Jesuits …)