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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree with your post, but:

> But at an art gallery, Picasso is near worshipped despite his torrid misogyny and abuse in his personal life which was terrible even by the standards of his day.

Picasso's work is the thing that is generally venerated, not so much the (rather loathsome) man himself. Similarly for Eric Gill, who produced great artistic work despite being an truly awful human being.

Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either.

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> Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either.

Scott's body of work spans many years and - like music bands - the early stuff is much different to the later stuff. To say he confined himself to "expressing prejudiced views" seems to overlook a whole lot of that early work.

To say his work doesn't "match" other artists work is subjective. I got/get the occasional giggle out of Dilbert - more often in the earlier ones. I don't care for Picasso's art at all but I recognise that other people do. Who's body of work should I personally rate higher? The top comment mentions feeling like Scott was family, while acknowledging all the flaws of Scott.

This is why I mention that good and bad actions can both stand.

Picasso's art looks to me like something a deranged child might draw.

Scott's work in the 1990s (i.e. ~30 years ago) was genuinely very funny at the time for anyone who worked in an office, including myself, when I was working as an engineering intern at a company. One strip I remember in particular came out just when our company had announced some silly new initiative and gave out free sweatshirts to motivate everyone, and the Dilbert strip that Sunday was almost exactly the same thing except it was t-shirts there. The timing was eerie.

It's sad to me how Adams fell, which largely seemed to happen after the popularity of Dilbert waned and may have been a reaction to that, but his work was funny and lovable in its earlier days.

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