Mary Papenfuss is a veteran journalist in newspapers, wires and digital media. She has worked as an editor at The New York Post, New York Daily News, Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, the Associated Press bureau in San Francisco and Salon. She was a Paris correspondent for People Magazine, stringer for Reuters and a staff writer for HuffPost. She’s the author of three books, including “American Huckster,” which grew out of Daily News scoop exposing a top U.S. soccer official who wore a wire to help the FBI nab corrupt FIFA leaders.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk is slamming the fallout over Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams' comments bashing Blacks as "racist" against whites.
Newspapers across the nation have dropped the Dilbert comic strip since Adams unleashed a tirade Wednesday on his YouTube program saying that white people should "get the hell away from Black people." Adams also called Black people a "hate group," adding: "I don't want to have anything to do with them." Adams has continued to defend his comments.
"For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians," Musk tweeted. "Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist."
Musk did agree with another tweet that said “Adams’ comments weren’t good," but which also added that ” there’s an element of truth” to them. Musk indicated in another reply that media organizations promote a “false narrative” by giving more coverage to unarmed Black victims of police violence than they do to unarmed White victims of police violence.
Musk had earlier tweeted — then deleted — a response to a complaint by Adams about newspapers pulling his comic strip. “What exactly are they complaining about?” asked Musk, who was then apparently out of the loop about the controversy, or simply didn't get it.
Adams angrily erupted in his controversial video last week as he cited a Rasmussen poll that found 26 percent of Black Americans disagreed with the statement that “it’s okay to be white,” and another 21 percent said they were “not sure” about the statement.
Adams indicated that the poll was evidence that Black Americans hate whites, and that there's "no fixing this." He has since emphasized on Twitter that he was responding to the poll results.
The poll statement about whether or not it's "okay" to be white originated as part of an online trolling campaign launched by the far right that was then embraced by white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
