Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-19-26

Years ago in one of my previous lives I was a cartoonist and an editor. I served as Comics Editor of three syndicates (later in that capacity at Marvel Comics, and as a writer at Disney and consultant for European and American comics publishers), and for a reason I now forget I was invited to Manhattan by John McMeel. John’s relatively new enterprise was Universal Press Syndicate.

Universal was so new that its New York office was a shared apartment with Garry Trudeau, its star cartoonist who drew Doonesbury. Its Kansas headquarters had seen its first light in a basement. John had unerring instincts, as his eventual empire proved – other strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Ziggy, For Better Or For Worse, The Far Side; and Uclick and Andrews McMeel Publishing enterprises. That afternoon, he showed me samples of a strip Universal was considering: Cathy. He wanted my opinion. I read through several dozen strips, and while I could picture Cathy finding an audience, my assessment of its violations of basic design and reproduction rules began, “John, the lady can’t draw.”

“You’re right,” he said, casually. “She’ll probably work that out in a year or two.” I thought this attitude was the death-knell of newspaper comics. In fact, rather, it marked a time when good drawing and adherence to craft became irrelevant to cartooning success. (Also, the end of Marschall as an oracle about anything commercial created subsequent to oh, 1927…) Doonesbury, after all, a colossus as Cathy would become, was also drawn execrably. Trudeau had the sense to hire a ghost artist, I believe never acknowledged, as many cartoonists do and even more of them should.

But we live in different times. The levels of craft and self-respect have dropped in the comics field; and the same attends the concepts, writing, and premises of many contemporary strips. Part of the reason is that the public is less demanding of its daily fare. In fact I think many readers are devoted to strips because they think, even subliminally, “If I had the chance to have my own strip, I couldn’t draw well either, but I’d stake my claim!” This is a general indictment of the contemporary arts in America, more than of one creation.

This week I am thinking of a creator of this sort, and a contemporary strip: Scott Adams, creator Dilbert, who died on Jan 13, 2025. Dilbert, Dogbert, and the rest of the cast of archetypal drones of the cubical culture never were drawn well. In fact they were drawn as if by Etch-a-Sketch, intentionally and aggressively badly. Not by mistake or by Scott’s clear limitations. He seldom attempted close-ups and never depicted a character’s reactions or emotions. The depiction of banality required such – the evil of banality, if I may misquote Hannah Arendt.

Whatever the inspirational source, the soulless population of Dilbert were middle-distant actors with stereotypical attitudes not in command of their environment but rather reflecting aspects of it. Almost mechanically (in fact appearing to be virtual schematic diagrams) they helplessly manifested the roles consigned to them by the bureaucrat-industrial complex.

In that regard, Scott’s clunky, amateurish drawing style was irrelevant. Of course it was irrelevant to readers: Dilbert found incredible acceptance. It was carried by 2000 newspapers, filled reprints books, shelves of licensed products, and was made into an animated TV series. The point, or a point, is that comic strips overwhelmingly have become observational bits – comedians’ monologues come to “life” – and have inspired their readers to replicate wisecracks and sarcastic walk-away lines in their own “lives.” Exhibit A: eavesdrop on any group’s conversations at restaurants. The sympathetic chuckles are demand-notes for reciprocal assent, so “laughter” substitutes for wisdom.

Humorous comic strips have had stylistic cycles: stereotypes; slapstick; farce; character-based interplay; irony; commentary. Charles Schulz developed a rhythm where the “punch” is in the penultimate panel, and a character comments to self or to the reader in the last panel. Scott Adams used a variant of that structure, which usually attracts the reader into the gag’s environment. All legitimate. What made Dilbert different was the environment itself, offices that contained acres of dull, sterile cubicles.

Throughout history, in my view, two classes have kept humans safe and sane: the saints (priests, prophets, theologians) and the silly (jesters, humorists, cartoonists). Grumpy, insecure Establishment types always have cultivated martyrs among these groups, and by body-counts they have achieved some success… yet we are only encouraged, not defeated. Thanks to happy contrarians like Scott Adams.

America has become a bureaucratized culture. Everyone knows it, and is accepting to varying degrees. People live and commute to and from cookie-cutter houses and neighborhoods. The government and its tentacles want to homogenize us. Every innovation in life is co-opted despite bread-and-circus efforts to persuade us that things can be changed, and we can change things, and the Establishment does not impose its agendas. But to join the Bureaucratic life is to automatically accept marginalization.

In a different, or earlier, context a century ago, Franz Kafka recognized, was crushed by, and addressed this new world. So did other writers and poets and playwrights. They reacted with gloom and despair. Scott Adams was a rare creator who beheld the same soul-crushing Bureaucratic State… but reacted with humor, irony, and identification. More and more people recognized those felt-lined cells called office cubicles. Everyone knew the contemporary versions of humanity’s nitwits, incompetents, poseurs, and hypocrites. Dilbert struck a chord… even as its creator scribbled his observations from a cubicle at Pacific Bell, where Scott labored 9 to 5 at first, unconsciously gathering inspirations.

As Scott’s fame grew so – inevitably – did the Establishment’s opposition. Who could object to jokes about computer programs and fax machines? Not readers, who identified. But, you see, Scott Adams was more than a jester; he eventually wrote serious books; and, thank God for the liberating nature of the internet, began sharing his larger thoughts about life, politics, and current events. His common sense reflected uncommon sense. Ever the iconoclast, this jester became a respected commentator; he endorsed Doanld Trump and was invited to the White House; and discomfited the Establishment.

One discussion about a poll by the great Scott Rasmussen that roughly half of the Black population would not choose to be White – or some such news-cycle filler – moved Scott to say that, if true, he would be less inclined to stroll in some Black neighborhoods. The simple remark was pronounced as racist by the Bigotry Police. He lost a multitude of self-righteous clients; his syndicate cast him out into the cold; and Scott was reduced to his books and podcast

… at which pursuits he thrived even more than before. The web carried Dilbert. The podcast audience was phenomenal. Now Scott could, and did, reach more people, easily combine humor and commentary, and continue to visit the White House.

At the apex of his greatest successes and cultural influence, however, that most evil of Establishmentarians, Satan, planned another attack. Scott was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He suffered further maladies like partial paralysis, challenges to his ability to draw and speak, and pain. President Trump and Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr fast-tracked alternative medicines.

Only weeks before his death Scott Adams addressed the public about his impending death. A startling portion of the statement addressed his imminent conversion to Christianity. Previously known for his rejection of faith, he wrote: Many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me. So here I go: I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry…

Adams, who could have statues or plaques in the Halls of Fame of Cynicism and Sarcasm, was totally serious. His remark betrays no panic but rather a calculated Pascal’s-Wager calculation, coldly triangulating between Mother Nature as oddsmaker, “What do I have to lose?” insouciance, and… an avoidance of what Christianity IS.

I tried to get through to Scott in his last weeks, hoping as many friends did that he “find Jesus.” There is always the possibility of a “deathbed conversion,” of course; and it. is. never. too. late to accept Christ, whose invitations have no scheduled start-times, nor expiration dates. But whether a person is in distress or has sudden lucidity or is the recipient of an urgent appeal at the end of life, whether from a friend or the Holy Spirit… We are blessed by such opportunities and workings of Grace. We do not know; we cannot know.

But the reception of Jesus into one’s heart is by definition life-changing. And life-saving. Personal conversion – after all, being saved from sin; yes, the prospect of eternal life – cannot be a “risk-reward” calculation. If one does “accept Jesus” you walk, talk, act differently. Of course! – whether you are eight and beginning life, or 68, moments from it ending. You can be smart, like Scott Adams, but never smarter than God.

I pray that Scott is in heaven now. No cubicles! Jesus promised, “In My Father’s house there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.” It would be the ultimate irony, in this rotten culture against which Scott Adams crusaded for years and lies to us about Christian truths, that he never realized the simplicity and beautiful promises of the Christian life.

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Click: Dame Judi Dench sings “Send in the Clowns” – BBC Proms 2010

9-21-25

A friend recently shared words of Erich Fromm, the social psychologist and psychoanalyst, from many of whose ideas I dissent, but a broken clock is right twice a day. Seriously, this comment addressing the contemporary crisis of humankind is on the mark:

Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces… he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.

We must add, of course, the most consequential factor – that is, missing factor – regarding alienation. It was supplied by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose life and (literal) trials were a more intense crucible than any experienced by the theoretician Fromm: Mankind has forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Henry Adams, the descendent of two US presidents, despaired of an American culture that was dissolving into pockets of personal alienation, with disunity as a harbinger of worse. In the early 20th century he visited two Medieval French cathedrals, Mont St-Michel and Chartres, and wrote detailed letters about them to nieces. He intended to address architecture, but found himself admiring the societies that built them during the so-called Dark Ages. Despite the putative retreat from accomplishments of the Roman Era, communities were structured and unified, where all classes communed and shared purposes, where beliefs were common, accepted, and cherished. These factors Adams admired.

The unifying force was the Church. Every town and city was built around the church; every civic event (not only religious) occurred in the church; every worker toiled at his or her job, and then worked for hours to build churches – often over generations. At this time all conversations, correspondence, and arts were centered on Biblical teachings. Every symbol in carvings, every image in stained-glass windows, every narrative in tapestries, every color in cloths and vestments, had spiritual significance that even the peasants understood.

It was unity. Individuals engaged in activities and crafts and professions… but worked as one. Foundational beliefs, common purposes, and communal loyalties were the essence of one’s existence on this side of Heaven.

Adams recognized that in his day, the essential matters of life – individual and collective – unity was disappearing in Western civilization. Despite advances in literacy, medicine, and prosperity, the “Dark Ages” were not totally dark, and that era’s demise was to be mourned. He attended a world’s fair in 1900 and beheld an exhibition called the Dynamo, a massive, clanking machine that did nothing except represent the coming “Machine Age.” Adams understood the thematic purpose; but he lamented its prophecy – that the coming world would be centered on, and virtually worship, machines. Machines (read: computers, AI, etc) would replace God.

The critiques of Plato, the early church fathers, St Augustine and Luther; Adams and Solzhenitsyn; secular observers like Kafka and Fromm; resonated in the person and legacy of Charlie Kirk. An unlikely heir? He is at home with most of the great prophets and great martyrs of Western history. Sadly but proudly.

This morning I had a call from my daughter Emily in Northern Ireland, where she has lived for 20 years. She expressed concern about the Charlie Kirk situation… and I expressed surprise that she knew of Charlie beyond my appearance on his show. She replied that he was quite well known in Ireland. Her family listened to him online at least once a week, and has done so for two years. My granddaughter is now 14. I asked what attracted her to Kirk; the main reason was his strong anti-abortion stand; next was “his intelligence in debates and how he was strong in sharing his ideas.” TurningPoint USA is a youth movement, but not only for youth.

Around the world there have been spontaneous and massive protests and vigils in the wake of Charlie’s murder. London, three million in the streets (all, as elsewhere, peaceful – to be compared with left-wing violence). Parades in Ireland, Berlin, Hamburg, Rome, Warsaw, Korea, Australia. Charlie’s mode of mentioning Jesus and promoting Christianity (focusing on faith more than himself), spread his larger message across the globe. His spiritual and related social themes coincide with the political upheavals throughout America and Europe: my family told me about a protest in the Northern Irish town of Newry where Unionists and Nationalists – that is, Protestants and Catholics who have been killing each other (the “Troubles”) for generations – were locked arm in arm in… unity.

Charlie’s message plugged into the West’s emotional dissolution. Frustrated societies have found hope in his spiritual, social, and political critiques. A worker in that Irish protest said to an interviewer that “even the church has let us down.”

Undeniably, this is true for many people. In fact virtually every institution in Western societies has let people down – Big Media, traditional political parties, the Entertainment Industry, the Education complex. Liberals in the church and other monopolies can push back or say that we are paranoiac. But perception is reality.

People believe they have been let down because they know they have been let down. Proven in the recent US election – and the political storms brewing in every European country – is the realization that traditions, culture, and community mean more to people than, even, poll-taker’s headline “issues.”

Returning to my first point, people are finally sick of alienation – being forced into modes that resist traditional, folkish identity and interaction. They are sick of dealing with what Fromm called powerlessness. Charlie Kirk’s major message was not political nor even social, but spiritual. Turning to Jesus, returning to Jesus, is the comfort food that is attracting hungry youth. His ministry, raised to the nth degree by his martyr’s death, is the spark that likely will ignite a fundamental change in America, the West, and around the world.

It is why he was killed. He was a Christian patriot… he argued for change… but most significantly, he was effective.

Think of all history’s examples of malignant opponents who “killed the messenger.” Every time it has been futile; that is, the advance of reform and renewal has withstood the desperate and usually evil attempts to stop it. The System, all over the world, has pressed down individuals and tried to mold an obedient mass distracted by bread and circuses, supposed to hate whom they are told to hate.

Mankind has forgotten God. Perhaps, by martyr’s blood, they are remembering.

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Click: Abide With Me