“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams revealed Monday that he is in the final stages of prostate cancer that spread to his bones. In a heart-wrenching video, the cartoonist, author and podcaster described pain so severe that he can only work a few hours a day.
He also said that one reason he waited so long to reveal his condition is that he didn’t want to have to deal with the hate on social media.
“Having watched how people treated Joe Biden when the diagnosis came... people are really cruel,” he said. “People are going to say it’s because I got the Covid shot — there’s no indication that makes a difference — people are going to say that it’s something I brought on myself, they’re going to say it’s because I lived a bad life. I don’t know.
“But people are going to be really, really terrible. So I wanted to reduce (the time) that people were being terrible to me online, because it’s going to be kind of hard to spend anytime online.”
Let’s sit with that a minute.
This is a man who’s been in the spotlight for more than three decades, who was defiant in the wake of widespread condemnation about his incendiary remarks about Black people in 2023, who has been excoriated over numerous other things he has said. He is dealing with pain he describes as “intolerable.” And yet social media hate was part of the reason he kept quiet about his condition.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s cancer, while apparently not as advanced as Adams’, has resulted in debate about whether or not criticism of the former president should subside in light of his diagnosis.
Some people have speculated that the Biden family orchestrated the timing of the announcement to generate sympathy just as “Original Sin,” the Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson book about Biden’s decline, was released. This theory is being used as an excuse to continue the conversation about Biden’s health during the presidency, as if nothing has changed. Journalist Alex Berenson wrote on Substack: “In normal times, the only decent response would be sympathy for Biden and his family. These are not normal times.”
Normal times or not, do we really want to be the kind of people who say of others, “Well, sure, this person has advanced cancer, but that doesn’t mean we should be any nicer”? The standards of decency should not change with the wind. Even in the criminal justice system, certain prisoners are offered “compassionate release” when they are in the last stages of a terminal illness.
Are there other places where “compassionate release” makes sense? It’s something to consider when we think about the timeline of grace.
Consider Adams, whose remarks about race two years ago were so unfathomably bone-headed that there were few people who would defend him when he was dropped by his syndicator, his publisher and thousands of newspapers (including the Deseret News).
How many years should a person suffer for an online mistake? Could publishers have picked up “Dilbert” again after, say, a year had passed?
In the case of Biden, should public figures get a pass for bad behavior or decisions when they become seriously ill? Does that standard change when the public figure is a former president, and the person’s decisions affected an entire country?
These are serious questions that no one seems to have a good answer for. But too often, it seems we only give people grace when they are dying, and sometimes not even then.
Meghan McCain, whose father died of brain cancer, wrote on X, “I don’t know if it’s just my bias or background but I don’t want to hear anything else about Biden’s health coverup, tell all’s, interviews with staff etc. Let the Biden family be in peace right now.” Thankfully, the haters seem to be in a minority, eclipsed by sentiments like McCain’s.
That doesn’t mean that the conversation about the Biden presidency should stop altogether. But surely it can continue with an extra measure of grace.
More thoughts on decency
The New York Times noted last week that the Cannes Film Festival has a new dress code that says, among other things, “for decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the red carpet, as well as in any other area of the festival.”
The change is apparently supposed to address the trend of “naked dressing,” in which the fabric of a garment is essentially invisible.
Add this to new Oscar rules, in which members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have to watch the films they are voting on for the Academy Awards, and it almost seems like common sense is back in vogue.
Recommended Reading
More on the subject of grace and forgiveness, this time in the arena of sports. Tad Walch writes:
“Most of the arguments I see for enshrining (Pete) Rose in the Hall of Fame center on the fact that the Hall is a museum. That word is part of its name. And baseball’s museum should include Rose because he is the game’s all-time hits leader and one of its best players. It’s a good argument, but it breaks down on inspection.”
Is there grace and atonement for baseball’s biggest sinners?
Naomi Schaefer Riley looks at the case of two young children who had to be disarmed by police in New Mexico. It’s part of the disturbing rise of children who get their hands on guns, often with tragic consequences.
“A surprising number of young children are killed when their parents ... leave loaded firearms around the house. These cases don’t involve anyone outside of the family and they don’t get the kind of press attention that school shootings do, but they are a sign of something very serious going on.
When it comes to gun violence, the kids are not OK
Wyoming native Kurt Graham (no relation) has been tasked with creating a presidential center for John Adams and John Quincy Adams, our second and sixth presidents. He discussed with Kevin Lind James Madison’s concept of “the disinterested man” and why Graham believes we need more of them in America today.
“(The founders) called it ‘disinterestedness’ ... not someone who was uninterested, it was someone who is impartial,” Graham said. “A republican citizen, a leader, is someone who can rise above the fray and make a decision for the public good even if it’s against your own self-interest … it’s for the good of the whole society.”
What John Adams and his family can teach America today, according to this presidential historian
Bumpersticker of the Week
Seen on the back of a Jeep Wrangler in New England this week: “I SUPPORT FEDERAL WORKERS.”
We may be seeing more of these, given the Washington Post’s reporting that, in 2023, a Trump associate said of federal workers, “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
Yikes. You can support ending waste, fraud and abuse in government, without villainizing our fellow Americans. And I say that as someone who thinks the DMV run by sloths in the movie “Zootopia” is peak American cinema.
Endnotes
I talked with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley last week about his new book, “The Affirmative Action Myth.” His views are provocative, to be sure, but he comes at the subject with hard data and years of study. Read more here.
And, circling back to the subject of bumperstickers, someone messaged me on X this week that he doesn’t understand why people like them. I am a bumpersticker person, but I’m hard-pressed to explain why, other than that a funny one can brighten my day. If you’ve seen a bumpersticker lately that made you think or laugh — or have thought of a bumpersticker you’d like to see, write me at Jgraham@deseretnews or DM me on X.
As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community.