CARLTON FLETCHER: Dilbert creator thinks he’s a victim … now, that is funny

Now you don’t talk so loud, Now you don’t seem to proud.

— Bob Dylan

We called them the “funny papers,” and as a boy I got up as early as I could to get the Sunday edition of The Albany Herald — which was delivered to the dirt road off U.S. Highway 319, a mile from our house — to see what all my favorite comic strip characters were up to.

Since I grew up, I’ve either worked at or subscribed to (or both) newspapers; from the time I was 18 years old until today. And like most readers, I’ve developed habits that I’ve usually found hard to break. Just like that young boy I was who ran or rode my bike that mile to get the paper every Sunday, I have, until only recently, read the comics section of whatever paper was delivered to my home pretty religiously.

(Funny story: When my former Herald colleague, editor-at-the-time Jim Hendricks, was given a few years back the order to cut out some of the longer-running comic strips that were in the Herald — some of which had run for decades — he weighed his decision carefully, going over the merits of each strip painstakingly before following through with orders to cut the strips that seemed to bring the least bang for the buck. The outrage that followed was … well, outrageous. Hendricks got hundreds of calls from irate readers who demanded that their favorite strips be brought back. And the callers were grown-ups, not the 11- and 12-year-olds who, one would expect, are cartoonists’ target audience. After Jim took all the heat, the powers that be gave in and ordered him to bring the comics back.)

As I earlier said, I don’t read the comics section anymore, finding that the distraction is no longer needed and I didn’t have the free time I once had. I did, however, read one comic daily.

Dilbert.

As most of us now know, though, “Dilbert” is no longer carried by this newspaper or a lot of other newspapers across the country. Herald President/Publisher Scot Morrissey made the decision to pull the strip after its creator, Scott Adams, went nuts in a YouTube rant and decided, based on a meaningless survey released by a conservative collective whose purpose is to stir up such controversy, that black people were a “hate group” and that whites should “stay the hell away from them.”

And here’s what stirred Adams up to the breaking point: The survey by that basically meaningless group showed that 47% of blacks surveyed didn’t agree with the statement that “It’s OK to be white.” To which I would probably have replied, “What in the hell kind of question is that?” Is it OK to be white? How does someone sensibly answer such an asinine question?

But the fact that so many blacks surveyed apparently didn’t think it was “OK to be white,” Adams started throwing out hate speech on his YouTube show. Now, newspapers large and small are pulling “Dilbert,” and Adams is on the fast track to becoming a sadly bemusing answer to a “Jeopardy!” question. (Or question to an answer, given the format of the show.)

Poor, put-upon Adams has decided that newspapers pulling his comic strip and right-thinking people condemning him for his stupid comments have put “free speech under assault.” He obviously is in panic/damage control mode. But his indignant cries are falling on deaf ears.

We’ll give you one thing, Mr. Cartoonist. This is the home of the free and the land of the brave, and our Constitution does give you — and members of all kinds of hate groups — the right to express unpopular opinions. But here’s the thing you’re forgetting: Just because you’re allowed to make such idiotic remarks doesn’t mean we have to agree with you or even waste a moment of our time listening to you.

And, as with this newspaper’s decision to pull your strip, we damned sure don’t have to spend our money financing your misguided hatred when we know how wrong it is.