October 25, 2025 • 34 mins
Who is Scott Adams? In Part Two, we tell the story behind Scott's first major controversy, and uncover the beginnings of the Dilbert cartoonist's war with the legacy media.
Presented by: Lear Capital (800-480-1100) & The Licorice Guy.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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goes away. Previously on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
So I started working on my career when I was six.
My boss called me to his office. He said, uh,
management just got caught having no diversity in senior management,
and until that changes, we can't promote you because you're
male and white. And that's when I started putting some
(01:15):
comics together and working my day job.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Scott Wood Doodle the main character on a whiteboard in
the office.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
And so one of my coworkers said he should be
called Dilbert, and I was like, oh, that's it, that's
his name, And he said that he was just writing
to make sure that I hadn't given up.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
And I had given up.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I realized I was talking to the biggest cartoon syndicate
in the world.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Who is Scott Adams? I'm Patrick Carelci and.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The media mox stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America, Brad, part two of our series of
(02:25):
episodes entitled The Internet dat We're looking for the answer
to the question who is Scott Adams by telling the
story of the famed comic strip artist, author, and podcaster.
So to pick up where we left off, in nineteen
eighty eight, Scott began developing his Dilbert comic strip with
(02:45):
United Media, one of the biggest, most respected comic strip
syndication companies in America. There was no guarantee newspapers we're
going to pick it up, but by April nineteen eighty nine,
a few dozen newspapers signed on to carry the comic.
Scott was on his way. After a year of grinding
as an artist, he received his first monthly royalty check.
(03:06):
It was for three hundred and sixty eight dollars and
sixty two cents. That was not going to pull him
away from his day job at the phone company, but
he kept plugging away. By nineteen ninety the comic strip
was in fifty newspapers. A year later it was up
to one hundred. Dilbert looked like he was about to
break out, but by the end of nineteen ninety two
(03:26):
it languished in only one hundred and fifty newspapers. The
rate of growth was slowing down because you see, the
biggest comic strips of the time were in two thousand papers.
Dilbert was plateauing. Scott needed to do something and fast.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
That's when he came up with a game changer. With
his comic looking like it was going to meet an
early demise, Scott's business training kicked in. He remembered that
every successful company figures out how to receive customer feedback,
and there was a bleeding edge technology that was just
beginning to pop up within the techie crowd.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Well, what about this internet thing and you know anything
about Sure, what the hell is that?
Speaker 6 (04:05):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well, it's become a place where people are publishing information.
Speaker 7 (04:10):
You can send electronic mail to people.
Speaker 8 (04:13):
It is the big new thing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Scott Adams decided to test the new.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Technology and I thought, Hey, I'm going to put my
email address between the borders of the strip and.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
See if anybody gives me ideas or input.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
His audience responded, and what they told him was to
set Dilbert in one specific environment.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
And people wrote to me and said, you know, we
kind of like your comic when he's at home and
playing with his dog and stuff, but we really like
it when he's at work because that's just like our work,
and then we relate to it. And so many people
told me the same thing, and nobody told me the opposite,
and so I said, well, if you're telling me that's
what it is, that's what it's going to be.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
And I made that change.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It was the right tweak at just the right time,
because corporate America was going through a massive shift that
would make Dilbert the champion of the cubicle warriors.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
For most of the previous decade, American industry experienced a
booming economy. During that time, companies staffed up and became bloated,
not only because of overstaffing, but also because of a
new mindset sweeping through corporate America.
Speaker 9 (05:24):
The upper levels of our society. It just continue to
be hugely dominated by white men. Affirmative action really is
just a more stiff version of how we have to
enforce all of our employment.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Laws by using attributes like skin color and gender and
hiring decisions. Corporate America shifted away from meritocracy. Productivity naturally
nosedivet eating Corporate America vulnerable to economic headwinds.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Government reports today offered analysts more evidence that the nation's
economy is headed toward a fourth quarter fall.
Speaker 10 (05:58):
It is shocking to have come out of such a
boom so quickly into a recession, and I think that
that is shocking everybody.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
When an economic downturn hit in the early nineteen nineties,
corporations began looking for ways to cut costs while increasing productivity.
Micromanaging became a standard in the office, but that wasn't enough.
Companies were looking for ways to drastically cut their labor costs.
That's when a new president made a move to give
corporate America the flexibility it needed to change the face
(06:28):
of their workforce. Literally, we'll create more jobs with NAFTA.
Newly elected President Bill Clinton sent out his vice President
Al Gore to campaign for the North American Free Trade Act,
a treaty between the United States, Canada, and Mexico that
purported to create one of the world's largest so called
free trade zones.
Speaker 11 (06:47):
And this treaty would increase jobs here, Oh, no question
about to say those announcement today that it would be
minimal either.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
There have been twenty three studies of the impact of
NAFTA on jobs in the United States. Twenty two of
them have shown that it will cause an increase in
jobs in the United States.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But the Clinton administration must have known it was hoodwinking
the American worker because practically every business instinct said that
a treaty like NAFTA would incentivize American corporations to move
their workforce out of the United States and into countries
with fewer regulations where they'd only have to pay a
fraction of what they were paying in America for labor.
(07:25):
Why deal with the headaches of regulations, unions, and productivity
killers like affirmative action. If you could just hire a
foreign workforce with none of that baggage. While the Clinton
administration won the public debate and in nineteen ninety three,
the President made NAFTA the law of the land.
Speaker 12 (07:41):
In a few moments, I will sign the North American
Free Trade Act into law. NAFTA will tear down trade
barriers between our three nations.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
It will create the world's largest.
Speaker 12 (07:52):
Trade zone and create two hundred thousand jobs in.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
This country by nineteen ninety five alone.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
But NAFTA, of course, had the opposite effect. Instead of
growing the American job market, operations began moving their businesses
into foreign lands and laying off their American workers. The
infamous downsizing of the American workforce was underway, a phenomenon
championed by leaders of industry like Warren Buffett and Charles Munger.
Speaker 11 (08:18):
Every industry, at all times is interested in downsizing or
becoming more efficient. Name of business that has been ruined
because it was over downsized. I cannot think of a
single one. But if you ask me to name businesses
that were half ruined or ruined by bloat, I mean
(08:39):
I could just rattle off name after name after name.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
This shift to foreign lands devastated the American workforce. Exxon
shed eighty six thousand workers at and T two hundred thousand,
General electricallyaid off two hundred and twenty one thousand, and
Ford a whopping three hundred and thirty seven thousand. Instead
of investing in their home countries, NAFTA incentivized the these
companies to invest in foreign nations.
Speaker 13 (09:05):
These American corporations, the large multinationals who are laying off
millions of American workers, they have invested this last year
seven hundred and fifty billion dollars abroad.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Downsizing impacted every sector of corporate America.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
The people that are being downsized, the underemployed, those people
that are waiting for the acts to fall on them next.
They're all looking to the future and they're saying, you know,
I'd better cut back on my expenditures.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
When Scott Adams refocused the setting of Dilbert on the workplace,
he naturally incorporated the themes impacting corporate America. He marcked micromanagement,
lampooned corporate bureaucracy, and found ways to weave in the
downsizing phenomenon into his art. Dilbert was the workplace comic
strip that white collar America didn't know it.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Was creating, and people needed a face for the workplace,
especially the and these were a lot of downsizing, and
the employee as a class didn't have a champion, didn't
have a face.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Dilbert became that face.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
And then the whole media grabbed onto it and said, oh,
it's all the Dilberts. There might be layoffs among the Dilberts,
you know, the people in.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Cubicles, the frustrated cubicle warriors had a new champion. It
was Dilbert. Scott Adams understood the moment. In nineteen ninety four,
he published his first book of comic strips. He titled
it Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies. The
book opened some new doors, and by the end of
that year, Dilbert was in four hundred newspapers. When nineteen
(10:43):
ninety five arrived, the dot com era was in full bloom,
with the Dilbert main character being an engineer. Tech workers
saw their lives in Dilbert characters as well. The tech
community's embrace of his workplace comic strip sparked another idea.
Scott decided to offer Dilbert on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
For free, and the Internet was brand new, and it
was something that you could easily send on the Internet
because it was a relatively small file.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
It was before video worked.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Well, and so it just took off like crazy on
the Internet. And that allowed the newspapers to have a little,
let's say comfort, and knowing that it.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Had an audience.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Now, with a successful book and his comic strip in
four hundred newspapers, you'd think Scott would have quit his
day job or perhaps even been fired. I mean, Dilbert
was brutally mocking the entire ecosystem of corporate management.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
It was actually very risky to make front of managers
and bosses because you couldn't do it at your job
because you get fired. And you know, as my reputation increased,
people kept wondering how long before I would get fired.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Scott sensed the acts was going to drop at any moment.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
But I did notice that all the projects I got
were the bad ones. I got the things that, Okay,
you're on this project, you're definitely getting fired for this,
because you know, if you work at any kind of
a big organization, you know which of the projects that
are going to end your career. I get all of
those after that point. But what they didn't realize is
that the worse it was for me at work, the
better my material was, and the richer I was getting
(12:21):
in my other job.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So Scott held on to his corporate gig to keep
the Dilbert ideas flowing.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I was getting my material from work, so I thought, whoa,
I might run out of material, and I can't be
a cartoonist unless I also have a job. You know,
you never know what exactly is the secret sauce that
makes something work. But the main thing is that as
soon as I knew I could leave any time I
wanted financially, work didn't hurt. If I'm going to miss
(12:48):
a deadline, I'd think, huh, I did my best. But
you know, in the old days, you'd still do your best,
But then you'd also feel bad, and you'd worry and
the consequences and the rest of your life and your career,
and none of that mattered. And I go to a meeting,
which normally would be so frustrating because people are just idiots.
(13:09):
Sometimes you just want to get up and start hitting
them with a rolled up newspaper.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
But you can't. You can't. They won't lay you.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
So those meetings used to drive me crazy, But once
I started seeing them as material for the comic, I'd
have my little notepad under the table and I'd just
be like, more on that, could you drive down to
(13:38):
a little detail on that?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Please? So it was just the perfect situation for me.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
The more evil they were, the better my career went
the other way.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But as Dilbert's public profile grew, it became obvious to
his colleagues and management that Scott would be making an
exit sooner or later.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And my coworkers made a deal with me and with
our mutual boss. They said, we like having you around
because I was in an area where customers would come
in to see our new technology. They said, the customers
are more likely to come in if you're here, because
I was already a sort of a celebrity by that point,
and especially among the techies, so their engineers would come
(14:17):
in to meet me, but then they get the tour
of our technology. So they said, here's the deal. We'll
do your work. You don't even have to come in
any days you don't feel like it, and we'll work
it out with a boss, and we'll just use you
as sort of the asset to bring people in and
maybe you come in on those days, but you don't
even have to do that. And so I said, all right,
I'll take that deal, but I'll also offer, and I
(14:39):
offered to my boss. I said, here's the deal. The
day that doesn't work for you, you don't need to
fire me, just ask if you need the budget for
someone else.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And sure enough, about a year and a half later,
his boss came knocking.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
He said, you know I need to add this function.
I don't have a budget. I can't get the budget.
You're not adding that much. So I'm going to take
you up on your offer. And he did, and that
was my last.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
In nineteen ninety five, Scott left the security of the
corporate world, but his entrepreneurial efforts were already exploding. By
the end of that year, Dilbert was in eight hundred newspapers,
and now he could focus on growing the comic strip
full time. His readers were clamoring for a business book
with witty prose on the work themes in Dilbert, so
(15:25):
in nineteen ninety six he published The Dilbert principle. It
eventually became a New York Times bestseller. His comic strip
circulation quickly jumped again to one thousand newspapers. Awards were
quick to follow. In nineteen ninety seven, Scott won both
Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year as well as the Best
Newspaper Comic Strip Award. Scott was told since he was
(15:48):
a boy that he'd someday become rich and famous. At
forty years old, that someday finally arrived. But amid his success,
Scott was about to get a lesson in social moms.
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Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So in nineteen ninety seven,
(17:12):
Scott Adams was a bona fide celebrity. He was told
since he was a boy he'd someday be rich and
famous with a wildly popular comic strip, awards and a
New York Times bestseller. That someday had finally arrived. But
amid this success, Scott was about to get a lesson
in social mobs.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I wrote the book The Dilber Future, and I tried
to make a bunch of predictions that we could actually
you know later test and I intentionally picked what I
thought was the most ridiculously impossible prediction. Well, I said,
anybody could predict a flying car. You know, you could
just say, well I missed it by five years. But
I told you flying car. You know, eventually we're going
to have one. So I wanted to pick something that
(17:52):
just nobody smart would be predicting. So then if you
get that one right, you know you really got something
to show. So I picked that the theory of evolution
would be debunked in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Gilbert's core fan base were science and tech professionals. Scott
was seemingly striking at the core of their faith evolution.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Now imagine every scientist and biologist hearing that, Oh my god.
I was attacked for years, decades actually from people saying
and the dumbest thing anybody ever said is this guy
doesn't believe in evolution. Now they twisted that into I
don't believe in evolution, which is not exactly what I
was saying.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
I was making a prediction.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Scott Adams ignited his first major controversy. Over two decades later,
Red Pilled America would do a deep dive into Scott's
prediction in an episode entitled Let There Be Light. We
ultimately argued that his prediction was proven right given the
science community's embrace of the simulation theory, the theory that
it is almost statistically certain that humans are living in
(18:54):
a simulated reality, a condition that makes evolution just a
program within that simulation. We won't go into that story here.
This is all to say that his nineteen ninety seven
prediction was one of the earliest indications that Scott had
a knack for courting controversy. As the late nineteen nineties arrived,
(19:18):
the icon status of Scott's Gilbert comic strip continued to grow.
It became so popular that it was even referenced in
TV sitcoms like News Radio The Love Cartoon.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Can you tell me who drew that? No, it is
so funny.
Speaker 11 (19:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Do you have an order?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Did you guys?
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Which one?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
If you drew the cartoon here with the little dog.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Matthew, Matthew, nobody here drew that.
Speaker 11 (19:39):
It's a comic strip called Gilbert.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's in newspapers every day.
Speaker 11 (19:43):
No, I assure you, I'm not kidd it is.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Scott himself was even given a cameo.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
You know sull of us have jobs to get to
save it.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Scott was invited to make other appearances, including the popular
TV show Babylon five.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
You want to hire me to find your dog? That's right?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
My cat too?
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Anything else?
Speaker 8 (20:04):
I sho know, Malcolm, They're planning to take over the galaxy.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Dilbert was reaching the pinnacle of its popularity.
Speaker 14 (20:13):
Cartoon of Scott Adams is here.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
For ten years.
Speaker 14 (20:16):
Dilbert, his cartoon creation, has offered a sardonic look at
contemporary corporate culture and the plight of the modern day
office worker. It has become the fastest growing comic strip
in syndication in the past three years. A cartoon has
spanned a vast empire which includes best selling books, an
Internet site, and over seven hundred Gilbert inspired products.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Scott expanded Dilbert into television by working alongside famed Seinfeld
writer Larry Charles to develop the Dilbert TV Show.
Speaker 14 (20:43):
In January, the animated television series Dilbert debuted on UPN.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
In nineteen ninety nine. The show would go on to
win a Primetime Emmy Award, but after two successful seasons,
Scott was hit with a familiar obstacle.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Eventually, we lost our time slot because they wanted to
turn Monday into an all African American comedy Nights.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But even with this setback, Dilbert continued to grow. By
the turn of the millennium, Scott's comic strip reached its
apex in print syndication, appearing in roughly two thousand newspapers.
Gilbert's immense popularity spawned a robust merchandising empire, including calendars,
office toys, and even food products.
Speaker 8 (21:28):
We're working on the product called the dil burrito.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
You may have heard of as a burrito.
Speaker 8 (21:36):
It's a food item and it's got your twenty three
of your vitamins and minerals, So if you ate it,
you'd have one hundred percent of what you needed of
those twenty three vitamins and minerals. And it's kind of
branded with Dilbert the dil Burrito, and so I formed
a company to create that. So I've got a virtual
company that has one employee but has a worldwide reach.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Right now, Scott and his team got his vitamin enriched
burrito into all the bigs like seven to eleven, Walmart, and Costco.
But by two thousand and three, the dil burrito gassed out.
Scott would later reminisce about the failure.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
The feedback from the customers.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Apparently, this product made you far more than more than
any product of all time. Somehow this product go all
the way through the testing. You know, we all ate
it and tested it, and we all had the same experience,
(22:35):
like privately and individually, we all had like the worst
fart attack you've ever had in your life. But I
think I think all of us individually didn't talk about it,
and we just figured, well, this is my body.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
They fight, they find it out there.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
He basically, you could eat that thing once and you
destroy all your furniture. That's one of my best failures,
of all my failures, I think I like that one
the best because it's so ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
But during this failure, Scott was having success in other
new areas. In two thousand and one, he published God's Debris,
a philosophical novella. Unlike his Office Humor, this fictional work
(23:38):
explored the idea that God blew itself up to create reality.
In two thousand and four, he followed it up with
the sequel entitled The Religion War, depicting a future conflict
driven by religious fanaticism. Scott suggested a provocative theme that
deep down, even fervent believers may subconsciously doubt their religions.
(23:59):
Like his evolution prediction, it underscored Scott's willingness to enter
controversial waters. Up until this moment in his life, Scott's
career was in the driver's seat, from managerial training and
securing an NBA in the nineteen eighties to developing Dilbert
in after hours while working for a phone company, to
growing his comic strip, writing books, launching a TV show,
(24:20):
and even a vitamin enriched gas inducing burrito company. Scott's
career endeavors were front and center for over two decades.
But then in two thousand and four, Scott met a lady.
Her name was Shelley. The two would marry on July
twenty second, two thousand and six, on a boat in
the San Francisco Bay. Scott's life entered a new phase.
(24:42):
Shelley had two young children from a previous marriage, an
eight year old daughter and a six year old son.
His time would be taken up by new activities like
watching his stepkids sports on the weekends and Disney movies
at night. At nearly fifty years old, Scott was living
the dad life, but that didn't stop him from stepping
(25:07):
into more controversy. Around two thousand and five, Scott picked
up a new tech hobby that was gaining momentum. Blogging
or Internet journaling, had been around since the early nineteen nineties,
when web designers published internet journals to discuss the development
of the World Wide Web. The practice was adopted slowly,
but then exploded into popularity after bloggers broke an enormous story.
Speaker 10 (25:30):
On September eighth, two thousand and four, just fifty five
days before a very close presidential election, Dan Rather and
his producer Mary Mates went on the air on the
weekday edition of sixty Minutes with a story that said
George W. Bush back in the sixties, joined the Air
National Guard to get out of going to Vietnam, that
he got in because his daddy was a big shot,
(25:50):
a congressman from Houston, a US congressman from Houston.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
That he was a slacker, that he.
Speaker 10 (25:55):
Was a draft dodger and a coward. Rather used what
he called never before seen documents to back up his story.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Dan Rather was a reporter. The two It took over
the CBS Evening newsdesk of legendary anchor Walter Cronkite. The
documents rather used in his story were supposedly typed on
a nineteen seventy three typewriter that within minutes of the story,
commentators in web forms like Free Republic began questioning the
authenticity of the documents. The discussions were quickly elevated by
(26:24):
blogs like Powerline and Little Green Footballs. They insisted that
the typography on the memos didn't match the typewriters of
the nineteen seventies. By their analysis, the documents rather was
using better matched the two thousand four default settings of
Microsoft word. The bloggers postulated that someone likely created the
(26:48):
documents on a modern computer, then ran them through a
copy machine many times to age them. Their theory was
picked up by the Drudge Report, then spread to other
conservative media outlets. The arguments were so compelling that they
eventually landed in the mainstream media. CBS News initially attempted
to deflect the scandal by asserting that multiple experts had
(27:10):
reviewed and authenticated the documents prior to airing the segment. However,
it was only after mounting and irrefutable evidence of forgery
emerged that Dan Rather and CBS News issued a formal apology.
Speaker 8 (27:23):
Dan Rather said of the Killian Memos story quote, I
made a mistake.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
I didn't dig hard enough long enough, didn't ask enough
of the right questions. Hetty says he believes his best
work is ahead of him as a reporter.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
It was a massive scandal that came to be known
as Rathergate. I mean, this was the most respected journalistic
institution in America. Sixty minutes the fake news story was
amplified by the most revered journalist in America, Dan Rather,
and was used to interfere with a presidential election. Multiple
CBS News executives were fired or forced to resign, and
(27:56):
on March ninth, two thousand and five, twenty four years
to the day he took over as anchor of CBS
Evening News, Dan Rather retired.
Speaker 14 (28:04):
We've shared a lot in the twenty four years we've
been meeting here each evening, and it deeply felt thanks
to all of you who have led us into your homes.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Night after night.
Speaker 14 (28:14):
It there's been a privilege and one never taken light light.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
It was an extraordinary moment for new media and brought
new legitimacy to blogging. It gave rise to blogging websites
like ritbart dot com. Scott Adams, always looking to get
involved in new innovations, began blogging in the wake of Rathergate,
and he almost immediately sparked his biggest controversy to date.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
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(29:03):
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risk of loss. Before making investment decisions, you should carefully
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Speaker 2 (29:51):
Do you want to hear red Pilled America stories ad free,
then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
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today and help us day of America, one story at
a time.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So Rathergate was an
extraordinary moment for new media. It brought a new legitimacy
to blogging. It gave rise to blogging websites like Breitbart
dot com. Scott Adams, always looking to get involved in
new innovations, began blogging in the wake of Rathergate. He
almost immediately sparked his biggest controversy to date. In two
(30:30):
thousand and six, Scott published a blog post criticizing the
media's habit of not providing context. He wrote, today's topic
is not about the Middle East, although it might look
like it. I'll just use the Middle East as an
example to illustrate my point. My point is that the
media never gives me the context I want. Scott's argument
was that the media needed to provide context for its
(30:52):
busy and or lazy audience that didn't have the time
to research their reporting. Scott went on, without proper context,
the news is misleading at best and intentionally biased at words.
He then went on to make his point by citing
a story that was in the news. The media made
a big deal, and rightly so, about the President of
Iran's comments about wiping Israel off the map and of
(31:14):
his questioning the Holocaust. No reasonable person doubts the Holocaust happened,
but wouldn't you like to know how the exact number
was calculated? Just for context? Without that context, I don't
know if I should lump the people who think the
Holocaust might have been exaggerated for political purposes with the
Holocaust deniers. If they are equally nuts, I'd like to
(31:34):
know that I want context. The post drew criticism from
a media that made a living from taking people out
of context. Some even claimed Scott Adams was a Holocaust denier,
(32:00):
but the post was clearly not a denial of the hall.
It was simply a critique about the lack of context
provided by the media, and the media's response was to
take Scott out of context, proving his point. The irony
was thick. Scott Adams was no doubt having an awakening
about the media. It was a machine that didn't provide context,
(32:21):
seemingly by design, and in just a few short years
he would use another new technology to provide context to
an unprecedented presidential candidate and in the process put his
entire Dilbert Empire in the crosshairs of the media establishment.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Coming up on Red Pilled.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
America, I just saw this tool called periscope where you
could just hold your phone in front of you and suddenly,
if anybody cared, they could be talking to you.
Speaker 6 (32:46):
So I've been trying to invite people on the show
who could explain how we might defeat Donald Pumpkinhead and
tell me your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
I've been studying persuasion for decades, and when I saw
Trump last summer displaying the tools of.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
I thought, oh, my god, he's not a crazy clown.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
Is visceral response to attack people on their appearance short, tall, fat, ugly.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
My goodness. That happened in Junior High.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
I never attacked him on his look, and believe me,
there's plenty of subject matter.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Right there that I can tell that is the best
persuasion you'll ever see.
Speaker 11 (33:24):
Newspapers across the country are dropping Dilbert.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick CARELCI and me Adriana Cortez for
Informed Ventures.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
You can get ad free access to our entire catalog
of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber. To subscribe, just
visit Redpilled America dot com and could join in the
top menu. Thanks for listening.
This is red Pilled America. What stories do you want
to hear from Red Pilled America. We want to hear
from you. Send us an email at info at Redpilled
America dot com and let us know what stories you
want to hear. That's info at Redpilled America dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And if you want access to our entire back catalog
of episodes, add free become a fanband member. Just go
to red Pilled America dot com and click join in
the topmenu. That's red Pilled America dot com and click
join in the topmenu. Support what you love or it
goes away. Previously on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
So I started working on my career when I was six.
My boss called me to his office. He said, uh,
management just got caught having no diversity in senior management,
and until that changes, we can't promote you because you're
male and white. And that's when I started putting some
(01:15):
comics together and working my day job.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Scott Wood Doodle the main character on a whiteboard in
the office.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
And so one of my coworkers said he should be
called Dilbert, and I was like, oh, that's it, that's
his name, And he said that he was just writing
to make sure that I hadn't given up.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
And I had given up.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I realized I was talking to the biggest cartoon syndicate
in the world.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Who is Scott Adams? I'm Patrick Carelci and.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The media mox stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America, Brad, part two of our series of
(02:25):
episodes entitled The Internet dat We're looking for the answer
to the question who is Scott Adams by telling the
story of the famed comic strip artist, author, and podcaster.
So to pick up where we left off, in nineteen
eighty eight, Scott began developing his Dilbert comic strip with
(02:45):
United Media, one of the biggest, most respected comic strip
syndication companies in America. There was no guarantee newspapers we're
going to pick it up, but by April nineteen eighty nine,
a few dozen newspapers signed on to carry the comic.
Scott was on his way. After a year of grinding
as an artist, he received his first monthly royalty check.
(03:06):
It was for three hundred and sixty eight dollars and
sixty two cents. That was not going to pull him
away from his day job at the phone company, but
he kept plugging away. By nineteen ninety the comic strip
was in fifty newspapers. A year later it was up
to one hundred. Dilbert looked like he was about to
break out, but by the end of nineteen ninety two
(03:26):
it languished in only one hundred and fifty newspapers. The
rate of growth was slowing down because you see, the
biggest comic strips of the time were in two thousand papers.
Dilbert was plateauing. Scott needed to do something and fast.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
That's when he came up with a game changer. With
his comic looking like it was going to meet an
early demise, Scott's business training kicked in. He remembered that
every successful company figures out how to receive customer feedback,
and there was a bleeding edge technology that was just
beginning to pop up within the techie crowd.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Well, what about this internet thing and you know anything
about Sure, what the hell is that?
Speaker 6 (04:05):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well, it's become a place where people are publishing information.
Speaker 7 (04:10):
You can send electronic mail to people.
Speaker 8 (04:13):
It is the big new thing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Scott Adams decided to test the new.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Technology and I thought, Hey, I'm going to put my
email address between the borders of the strip and.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
See if anybody gives me ideas or input.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
His audience responded, and what they told him was to
set Dilbert in one specific environment.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
And people wrote to me and said, you know, we
kind of like your comic when he's at home and
playing with his dog and stuff, but we really like
it when he's at work because that's just like our work,
and then we relate to it. And so many people
told me the same thing, and nobody told me the opposite,
and so I said, well, if you're telling me that's
what it is, that's what it's going to be.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
And I made that change.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It was the right tweak at just the right time,
because corporate America was going through a massive shift that
would make Dilbert the champion of the cubicle warriors.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
For most of the previous decade, American industry experienced a
booming economy. During that time, companies staffed up and became bloated,
not only because of overstaffing, but also because of a
new mindset sweeping through corporate America.
Speaker 9 (05:24):
The upper levels of our society. It just continue to
be hugely dominated by white men. Affirmative action really is
just a more stiff version of how we have to
enforce all of our employment.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Laws by using attributes like skin color and gender and
hiring decisions. Corporate America shifted away from meritocracy. Productivity naturally
nosedivet eating Corporate America vulnerable to economic headwinds.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Government reports today offered analysts more evidence that the nation's
economy is headed toward a fourth quarter fall.
Speaker 10 (05:58):
It is shocking to have come out of such a
boom so quickly into a recession, and I think that
that is shocking everybody.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
When an economic downturn hit in the early nineteen nineties,
corporations began looking for ways to cut costs while increasing productivity.
Micromanaging became a standard in the office, but that wasn't enough.
Companies were looking for ways to drastically cut their labor costs.
That's when a new president made a move to give
corporate America the flexibility it needed to change the face
(06:28):
of their workforce. Literally, we'll create more jobs with NAFTA.
Newly elected President Bill Clinton sent out his vice President
Al Gore to campaign for the North American Free Trade Act,
a treaty between the United States, Canada, and Mexico that
purported to create one of the world's largest so called
free trade zones.
Speaker 11 (06:47):
And this treaty would increase jobs here, Oh, no question
about to say those announcement today that it would be
minimal either.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
There have been twenty three studies of the impact of
NAFTA on jobs in the United States. Twenty two of
them have shown that it will cause an increase in
jobs in the United States.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But the Clinton administration must have known it was hoodwinking
the American worker because practically every business instinct said that
a treaty like NAFTA would incentivize American corporations to move
their workforce out of the United States and into countries
with fewer regulations where they'd only have to pay a
fraction of what they were paying in America for labor.
(07:25):
Why deal with the headaches of regulations, unions, and productivity
killers like affirmative action. If you could just hire a
foreign workforce with none of that baggage. While the Clinton
administration won the public debate and in nineteen ninety three,
the President made NAFTA the law of the land.
Speaker 12 (07:41):
In a few moments, I will sign the North American
Free Trade Act into law. NAFTA will tear down trade
barriers between our three nations.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
It will create the world's largest.
Speaker 12 (07:52):
Trade zone and create two hundred thousand jobs in.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
This country by nineteen ninety five alone.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
But NAFTA, of course, had the opposite effect. Instead of
growing the American job market, operations began moving their businesses
into foreign lands and laying off their American workers. The
infamous downsizing of the American workforce was underway, a phenomenon
championed by leaders of industry like Warren Buffett and Charles Munger.
Speaker 11 (08:18):
Every industry, at all times is interested in downsizing or
becoming more efficient. Name of business that has been ruined
because it was over downsized. I cannot think of a
single one. But if you ask me to name businesses
that were half ruined or ruined by bloat, I mean
(08:39):
I could just rattle off name after name after name.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
This shift to foreign lands devastated the American workforce. Exxon
shed eighty six thousand workers at and T two hundred thousand,
General electricallyaid off two hundred and twenty one thousand, and
Ford a whopping three hundred and thirty seven thousand. Instead
of investing in their home countries, NAFTA incentivized the these
companies to invest in foreign nations.
Speaker 13 (09:05):
These American corporations, the large multinationals who are laying off
millions of American workers, they have invested this last year
seven hundred and fifty billion dollars abroad.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Downsizing impacted every sector of corporate America.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
The people that are being downsized, the underemployed, those people
that are waiting for the acts to fall on them next.
They're all looking to the future and they're saying, you know,
I'd better cut back on my expenditures.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
When Scott Adams refocused the setting of Dilbert on the workplace,
he naturally incorporated the themes impacting corporate America. He marcked micromanagement,
lampooned corporate bureaucracy, and found ways to weave in the
downsizing phenomenon into his art. Dilbert was the workplace comic
strip that white collar America didn't know it.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Was creating, and people needed a face for the workplace,
especially the and these were a lot of downsizing, and
the employee as a class didn't have a champion, didn't
have a face.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Dilbert became that face.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
And then the whole media grabbed onto it and said, oh,
it's all the Dilberts. There might be layoffs among the Dilberts,
you know, the people in.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Cubicles, the frustrated cubicle warriors had a new champion. It
was Dilbert. Scott Adams understood the moment. In nineteen ninety four,
he published his first book of comic strips. He titled
it Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies. The
book opened some new doors, and by the end of
that year, Dilbert was in four hundred newspapers. When nineteen
(10:43):
ninety five arrived, the dot com era was in full bloom,
with the Dilbert main character being an engineer. Tech workers
saw their lives in Dilbert characters as well. The tech
community's embrace of his workplace comic strip sparked another idea.
Scott decided to offer Dilbert on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
For free, and the Internet was brand new, and it
was something that you could easily send on the Internet
because it was a relatively small file.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
It was before video worked.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Well, and so it just took off like crazy on
the Internet. And that allowed the newspapers to have a little,
let's say comfort, and knowing that it.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Had an audience.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Now, with a successful book and his comic strip in
four hundred newspapers, you'd think Scott would have quit his
day job or perhaps even been fired. I mean, Dilbert
was brutally mocking the entire ecosystem of corporate management.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
It was actually very risky to make front of managers
and bosses because you couldn't do it at your job
because you get fired. And you know, as my reputation increased,
people kept wondering how long before I would get fired.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Scott sensed the acts was going to drop at any moment.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
But I did notice that all the projects I got
were the bad ones. I got the things that, Okay,
you're on this project, you're definitely getting fired for this,
because you know, if you work at any kind of
a big organization, you know which of the projects that
are going to end your career. I get all of
those after that point. But what they didn't realize is
that the worse it was for me at work, the
better my material was, and the richer I was getting
(12:21):
in my other job.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So Scott held on to his corporate gig to keep
the Dilbert ideas flowing.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I was getting my material from work, so I thought, whoa,
I might run out of material, and I can't be
a cartoonist unless I also have a job. You know,
you never know what exactly is the secret sauce that
makes something work. But the main thing is that as
soon as I knew I could leave any time I
wanted financially, work didn't hurt. If I'm going to miss
(12:48):
a deadline, I'd think, huh, I did my best. But
you know, in the old days, you'd still do your best,
But then you'd also feel bad, and you'd worry and
the consequences and the rest of your life and your career,
and none of that mattered. And I go to a meeting,
which normally would be so frustrating because people are just idiots.
(13:09):
Sometimes you just want to get up and start hitting
them with a rolled up newspaper.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
But you can't. You can't. They won't lay you.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
So those meetings used to drive me crazy, But once
I started seeing them as material for the comic, I'd
have my little notepad under the table and I'd just
be like, more on that, could you drive down to
(13:38):
a little detail on that?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Please? So it was just the perfect situation for me.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
The more evil they were, the better my career went
the other way.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But as Dilbert's public profile grew, it became obvious to
his colleagues and management that Scott would be making an
exit sooner or later.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And my coworkers made a deal with me and with
our mutual boss. They said, we like having you around
because I was in an area where customers would come
in to see our new technology. They said, the customers
are more likely to come in if you're here, because
I was already a sort of a celebrity by that point,
and especially among the techies, so their engineers would come
(14:17):
in to meet me, but then they get the tour
of our technology. So they said, here's the deal. We'll
do your work. You don't even have to come in
any days you don't feel like it, and we'll work
it out with a boss, and we'll just use you
as sort of the asset to bring people in and
maybe you come in on those days, but you don't
even have to do that. And so I said, all right,
I'll take that deal, but I'll also offer, and I
(14:39):
offered to my boss. I said, here's the deal. The
day that doesn't work for you, you don't need to
fire me, just ask if you need the budget for
someone else.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And sure enough, about a year and a half later,
his boss came knocking.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
He said, you know I need to add this function.
I don't have a budget. I can't get the budget.
You're not adding that much. So I'm going to take
you up on your offer. And he did, and that
was my last.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
In nineteen ninety five, Scott left the security of the
corporate world, but his entrepreneurial efforts were already exploding. By
the end of that year, Dilbert was in eight hundred newspapers,
and now he could focus on growing the comic strip
full time. His readers were clamoring for a business book
with witty prose on the work themes in Dilbert, so
(15:25):
in nineteen ninety six he published The Dilbert principle. It
eventually became a New York Times bestseller. His comic strip
circulation quickly jumped again to one thousand newspapers. Awards were
quick to follow. In nineteen ninety seven, Scott won both
Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year as well as the Best
Newspaper Comic Strip Award. Scott was told since he was
(15:48):
a boy that he'd someday become rich and famous. At
forty years old, that someday finally arrived. But amid his success,
Scott was about to get a lesson in social moms.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
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Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So in nineteen ninety seven,
(17:12):
Scott Adams was a bona fide celebrity. He was told
since he was a boy he'd someday be rich and
famous with a wildly popular comic strip, awards and a
New York Times bestseller. That someday had finally arrived. But
amid this success, Scott was about to get a lesson
in social mobs.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I wrote the book The Dilber Future, and I tried
to make a bunch of predictions that we could actually
you know later test and I intentionally picked what I
thought was the most ridiculously impossible prediction. Well, I said,
anybody could predict a flying car. You know, you could
just say, well I missed it by five years. But
I told you flying car. You know, eventually we're going
to have one. So I wanted to pick something that
(17:52):
just nobody smart would be predicting. So then if you
get that one right, you know you really got something
to show. So I picked that the theory of evolution
would be debunked in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Gilbert's core fan base were science and tech professionals. Scott
was seemingly striking at the core of their faith evolution.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Now imagine every scientist and biologist hearing that, Oh my god.
I was attacked for years, decades actually from people saying
and the dumbest thing anybody ever said is this guy
doesn't believe in evolution. Now they twisted that into I
don't believe in evolution, which is not exactly what I
was saying.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
I was making a prediction.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Scott Adams ignited his first major controversy. Over two decades later,
Red Pilled America would do a deep dive into Scott's
prediction in an episode entitled Let There Be Light. We
ultimately argued that his prediction was proven right given the
science community's embrace of the simulation theory, the theory that
it is almost statistically certain that humans are living in
(18:54):
a simulated reality, a condition that makes evolution just a
program within that simulation. We won't go into that story here.
This is all to say that his nineteen ninety seven
prediction was one of the earliest indications that Scott had
a knack for courting controversy. As the late nineteen nineties arrived,
(19:18):
the icon status of Scott's Gilbert comic strip continued to grow.
It became so popular that it was even referenced in
TV sitcoms like News Radio The Love Cartoon.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Can you tell me who drew that? No, it is
so funny.
Speaker 11 (19:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Do you have an order?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Did you guys?
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Which one?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
If you drew the cartoon here with the little dog.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Matthew, Matthew, nobody here drew that.
Speaker 11 (19:39):
It's a comic strip called Gilbert.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's in newspapers every day.
Speaker 11 (19:43):
No, I assure you, I'm not kidd it is.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Scott himself was even given a cameo.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
You know sull of us have jobs to get to
save it.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Scott was invited to make other appearances, including the popular
TV show Babylon five.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
You want to hire me to find your dog? That's right?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
My cat too?
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Anything else?
Speaker 8 (20:04):
I sho know, Malcolm, They're planning to take over the galaxy.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Dilbert was reaching the pinnacle of its popularity.
Speaker 14 (20:13):
Cartoon of Scott Adams is here.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
For ten years.
Speaker 14 (20:16):
Dilbert, his cartoon creation, has offered a sardonic look at
contemporary corporate culture and the plight of the modern day
office worker. It has become the fastest growing comic strip
in syndication in the past three years. A cartoon has
spanned a vast empire which includes best selling books, an
Internet site, and over seven hundred Gilbert inspired products.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Scott expanded Dilbert into television by working alongside famed Seinfeld
writer Larry Charles to develop the Dilbert TV Show.
Speaker 14 (20:43):
In January, the animated television series Dilbert debuted on UPN.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
In nineteen ninety nine. The show would go on to
win a Primetime Emmy Award, but after two successful seasons,
Scott was hit with a familiar obstacle.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Eventually, we lost our time slot because they wanted to
turn Monday into an all African American comedy Nights.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But even with this setback, Dilbert continued to grow. By
the turn of the millennium, Scott's comic strip reached its
apex in print syndication, appearing in roughly two thousand newspapers.
Gilbert's immense popularity spawned a robust merchandising empire, including calendars,
office toys, and even food products.
Speaker 8 (21:28):
We're working on the product called the dil burrito.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
You may have heard of as a burrito.
Speaker 8 (21:36):
It's a food item and it's got your twenty three
of your vitamins and minerals, So if you ate it,
you'd have one hundred percent of what you needed of
those twenty three vitamins and minerals. And it's kind of
branded with Dilbert the dil Burrito, and so I formed
a company to create that. So I've got a virtual
company that has one employee but has a worldwide reach.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Right now, Scott and his team got his vitamin enriched
burrito into all the bigs like seven to eleven, Walmart, and Costco.
But by two thousand and three, the dil burrito gassed out.
Scott would later reminisce about the failure.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
The feedback from the customers.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Apparently, this product made you far more than more than
any product of all time. Somehow this product go all
the way through the testing. You know, we all ate
it and tested it, and we all had the same experience,
(22:35):
like privately and individually, we all had like the worst
fart attack you've ever had in your life. But I
think I think all of us individually didn't talk about it,
and we just figured, well, this is my body.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
They fight, they find it out there.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
He basically, you could eat that thing once and you
destroy all your furniture. That's one of my best failures,
of all my failures, I think I like that one
the best because it's so ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
But during this failure, Scott was having success in other
new areas. In two thousand and one, he published God's Debris,
a philosophical novella. Unlike his Office Humor, this fictional work
(23:38):
explored the idea that God blew itself up to create reality.
In two thousand and four, he followed it up with
the sequel entitled The Religion War, depicting a future conflict
driven by religious fanaticism. Scott suggested a provocative theme that
deep down, even fervent believers may subconsciously doubt their religions.
(23:59):
Like his evolution prediction, it underscored Scott's willingness to enter
controversial waters. Up until this moment in his life, Scott's
career was in the driver's seat, from managerial training and
securing an NBA in the nineteen eighties to developing Dilbert
in after hours while working for a phone company, to
growing his comic strip, writing books, launching a TV show,
(24:20):
and even a vitamin enriched gas inducing burrito company. Scott's
career endeavors were front and center for over two decades.
But then in two thousand and four, Scott met a lady.
Her name was Shelley. The two would marry on July
twenty second, two thousand and six, on a boat in
the San Francisco Bay. Scott's life entered a new phase.
(24:42):
Shelley had two young children from a previous marriage, an
eight year old daughter and a six year old son.
His time would be taken up by new activities like
watching his stepkids sports on the weekends and Disney movies
at night. At nearly fifty years old, Scott was living
the dad life, but that didn't stop him from stepping
(25:07):
into more controversy. Around two thousand and five, Scott picked
up a new tech hobby that was gaining momentum. Blogging
or Internet journaling, had been around since the early nineteen nineties,
when web designers published internet journals to discuss the development
of the World Wide Web. The practice was adopted slowly,
but then exploded into popularity after bloggers broke an enormous story.
Speaker 10 (25:30):
On September eighth, two thousand and four, just fifty five
days before a very close presidential election, Dan Rather and
his producer Mary Mates went on the air on the
weekday edition of sixty Minutes with a story that said
George W. Bush back in the sixties, joined the Air
National Guard to get out of going to Vietnam, that
he got in because his daddy was a big shot,
(25:50):
a congressman from Houston, a US congressman from Houston.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
That he was a slacker, that he.
Speaker 10 (25:55):
Was a draft dodger and a coward. Rather used what
he called never before seen documents to back up his story.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Dan Rather was a reporter. The two It took over
the CBS Evening newsdesk of legendary anchor Walter Cronkite. The
documents rather used in his story were supposedly typed on
a nineteen seventy three typewriter that within minutes of the story,
commentators in web forms like Free Republic began questioning the
authenticity of the documents. The discussions were quickly elevated by
(26:24):
blogs like Powerline and Little Green Footballs. They insisted that
the typography on the memos didn't match the typewriters of
the nineteen seventies. By their analysis, the documents rather was
using better matched the two thousand four default settings of
Microsoft word. The bloggers postulated that someone likely created the
(26:48):
documents on a modern computer, then ran them through a
copy machine many times to age them. Their theory was
picked up by the Drudge Report, then spread to other
conservative media outlets. The arguments were so compelling that they
eventually landed in the mainstream media. CBS News initially attempted
to deflect the scandal by asserting that multiple experts had
(27:10):
reviewed and authenticated the documents prior to airing the segment. However,
it was only after mounting and irrefutable evidence of forgery
emerged that Dan Rather and CBS News issued a formal apology.
Speaker 8 (27:23):
Dan Rather said of the Killian Memos story quote, I
made a mistake.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
I didn't dig hard enough long enough, didn't ask enough
of the right questions. Hetty says he believes his best
work is ahead of him as a reporter.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
It was a massive scandal that came to be known
as Rathergate. I mean, this was the most respected journalistic
institution in America. Sixty minutes the fake news story was
amplified by the most revered journalist in America, Dan Rather,
and was used to interfere with a presidential election. Multiple
CBS News executives were fired or forced to resign, and
(27:56):
on March ninth, two thousand and five, twenty four years
to the day he took over as anchor of CBS
Evening News, Dan Rather retired.
Speaker 14 (28:04):
We've shared a lot in the twenty four years we've
been meeting here each evening, and it deeply felt thanks
to all of you who have led us into your homes.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Night after night.
Speaker 14 (28:14):
It there's been a privilege and one never taken light light.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
It was an extraordinary moment for new media and brought
new legitimacy to blogging. It gave rise to blogging websites
like ritbart dot com. Scott Adams, always looking to get
involved in new innovations, began blogging in the wake of Rathergate,
and he almost immediately sparked his biggest controversy to date.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
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(29:03):
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(29:23):
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(29:45):
risk of loss. Before making investment decisions, you should carefully
consider and review all risks involved.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Do you want to hear red Pilled America stories ad free,
then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
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today and help us day of America, one story at
a time.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So Rathergate was an
extraordinary moment for new media. It brought a new legitimacy
to blogging. It gave rise to blogging websites like Breitbart
dot com. Scott Adams, always looking to get involved in
new innovations, began blogging in the wake of Rathergate. He
almost immediately sparked his biggest controversy to date. In two
(30:30):
thousand and six, Scott published a blog post criticizing the
media's habit of not providing context. He wrote, today's topic
is not about the Middle East, although it might look
like it. I'll just use the Middle East as an
example to illustrate my point. My point is that the
media never gives me the context I want. Scott's argument
was that the media needed to provide context for its
(30:52):
busy and or lazy audience that didn't have the time
to research their reporting. Scott went on, without proper context,
the news is misleading at best and intentionally biased at words.
He then went on to make his point by citing
a story that was in the news. The media made
a big deal, and rightly so, about the President of
Iran's comments about wiping Israel off the map and of
(31:14):
his questioning the Holocaust. No reasonable person doubts the Holocaust happened,
but wouldn't you like to know how the exact number
was calculated? Just for context? Without that context, I don't
know if I should lump the people who think the
Holocaust might have been exaggerated for political purposes with the
Holocaust deniers. If they are equally nuts, I'd like to
(31:34):
know that I want context. The post drew criticism from
a media that made a living from taking people out
of context. Some even claimed Scott Adams was a Holocaust denier,
(32:00):
but the post was clearly not a denial of the hall.
It was simply a critique about the lack of context
provided by the media, and the media's response was to
take Scott out of context, proving his point. The irony
was thick. Scott Adams was no doubt having an awakening
about the media. It was a machine that didn't provide context,
(32:21):
seemingly by design, and in just a few short years
he would use another new technology to provide context to
an unprecedented presidential candidate and in the process put his
entire Dilbert Empire in the crosshairs of the media establishment.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Coming up on Red Pilled.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
America, I just saw this tool called periscope where you
could just hold your phone in front of you and suddenly,
if anybody cared, they could be talking to you.
Speaker 6 (32:46):
So I've been trying to invite people on the show
who could explain how we might defeat Donald Pumpkinhead and
tell me your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
I've been studying persuasion for decades, and when I saw
Trump last summer displaying the tools of.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
I thought, oh, my god, he's not a crazy clown.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
Is visceral response to attack people on their appearance short, tall, fat, ugly.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
My goodness. That happened in Junior High.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
I never attacked him on his look, and believe me,
there's plenty of subject matter.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Right there that I can tell that is the best
persuasion you'll ever see.
Speaker 11 (33:24):
Newspapers across the country are dropping Dilbert.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick CARELCI and me Adriana Cortez for
Informed Ventures.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
You can get ad free access to our entire catalog
of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber. To subscribe, just
visit Redpilled America dot com and could join in the
top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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