Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9503310079
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH STROTHER EDITORIAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
PUH-LEEZE don't confuse me for anyone even remotely responsible for the newspaper's selection of comics.
I have no say (let me repeat that - no say) in decisions about what to drop and what to add. I say plenty, but I have no say.
You know what I mean.
Like you.
Every time we tamper with the comics, fans of the strips that get chucked out go through withdrawal agonies. I know this (though, again, I have absolutely nothing to do with it) because protests pour in on our reader comment line informing the staffers responsible that they are blockheads. These comments are circulated weekly throughout the newspaper and, speaking personally, are read avidly.
I feel your pain.
This is only a rough estimate, but I'm guessing 5,867,485 people have complained about Beetle Bailey getting his discharge papers. Remarkable, considering our circulation hovers around 125,000.
I do feel your pain. Really. But frankly, I don't miss Beetle. I know I am stepping on about 58,674,850 toes here, but, for me, seeing Beetle pounded into squiggly lines by Sarge lost its entertainment value somewhere around the hundred thousandth time. How retro.
(Seriously, no one around here ever has asked my opinion about any of our comics, so my views had no influence whatsoever on the decision to downsize Beetle. My sole role has been to look at all the reader complaints and send an e-mail to the executive editor asking, are we blockheads, or what?)
Sure I feel a tug of nostalgia. I grew up reading Beetle daily. But despite the feminazification of Miss Buxley (who may demand the appearance, at least, of respect from that old goat, Halftrack, but who still uses her feminine charms to get out of doing much work - very, very inappropriate), I find the strip that cracks me up these days is Dilbert.
"Dilbert"? you're thinking. "The really bland-looking strip featuring the chubby nerd who clutches his necktie in anxiety so much that it turns up at the end?" That's the one.
Dilbert's office is today's workplace. Forget Dagwood. Sure, he's still popular. (Don't worry. We're not thinking of dumping him.) But Dagwood dangling outside the window of a high rise as Mr. Dithers pounds on his fingers simply does not resonate with today's flattened model of labor-management cooperation, with its emphasis on a shared vision toward which every employee is working as part of a team to continuously improve the product for the delight of the customer.
Simply put, in today's work environment, there are no windows that open. We cannot be tossed out. We are hermetically sealed in.
Rather than snoozing at his desk as Dagwood does in a spacious office that could easily be subdivided into eight work stations, Dilbert pecks away at his computer terminal in his little cube, standing and looking over the cubicle wall occasionally to talk to his short, bald, bespectacled pal, Wally.
"Wally," Dilbert says, peering over the barrier, "you just sent me the same e-mail you sent last week." "I'm rerunning the 'Best of Wally' while I'm on in-cube sabbatical," Wally explains, reclining in his ergonomically designed chair. "How long is your sabbatical?" asks Dilbert. "Six months, so far," Wally replies, "and you're the first to notice."
Personal foibles, organizational missteps, societal discord, global rivalry - Dilbert stumbles along through it all, your average Angry White Male who seems not angry, actually, but befuddled, as cartoonist Scott Adams skewers the pettiness, buffoonery and hypocrisy that pop up when people work together. The failings are timeless. The situations are now.
Dilbert is tapped as a team leader. (``There's no extra money, just extra responsibility," his devilish-looking boss informs him. "It's how we recognize our best people." "I thought all the good people leave for better companies," Dilbert comments as the boss walks away. "That's another way to recognize them," he concedes.)
Dilbert tries telecommuting. (``On my fourth day of telecommuting," he types into his computer, "I realize that clothes are totally unnecessary. ... ")
Dilbert works with a woman, who plays a supporting role, true, but is at least a professional, a woman who survives in the office not by showing a lot of cleavage but by working harder than the guys. He and Wally assure her that this is only because they have learned to work more efficiently. Uh-huh.
Now that I have irritated the executive editor with unsolicited musings questioning the wisdom of changing people's beloved comic strips, and hypocritically followed this with a shameless embrace of Dilbert, he is plotting his revenge. If the strip doesn't win a following, he e-mailed me, "your beloved Dilbert's in trouble!" Worse, if it does, we might have to add it to the Sunday comics. "Maybe you'd like to pick which one of the Sunday ones to drop when that day comes????????"
You see how ugly office life can be? Does he think I'm a blockhead? I intend to e-mail him back that I am on "in-office sabbatical." Indefinitely.
by CNB