How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, did he somehow become radicalized or was it perhaps medically induced, e.g. a stroke or something. It was incredibly sad to see him throw away his life's work and go down a path most of us at least hadn't foreseen and die having alienated his fans.
Almost everyone is reasonable, it’s the contexts that our reasons are relevant to, which are different.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
Saying something publicly is an action. Depending on what you say, you can’t take it back. If you tell your wife you think her friend is hot and you want a threesome you can’t take that back.
I also think you as the commenter should think a little bit about what motivates you to defend this guy. Why does he as a dead famous comic book author need his reputation defended? Why is it so important that we don’t see him as a racist asshole? What do you get out of that? Why not just let his own mistakes speak for themselves?
That's the sort of thing an Catholic inquisitor would say. Denial proves guilt!
It’s not like Scott Adams did nothing wrong and was pulled in front of an inquisitor. He said weird shit and then had to play a game of PR damage control.
It’s actually worse when you’re doing it as your job because you’re supposed to know better and be proficient at that craft. It’s not like someone hot micced him having a private conversation with his buddies, this was a man who had been interfacing with the public for decades.
The only people frothing about the mouth over it are people who hate him over politics, it's a convenient gotcha - nothing more.
Give him a generous read on his opinions if that’s what you want to do. To me, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
Modern white supremacists don’t just come out and say things directly because of how it’s obviously reprehensible, they surround themselves with plausible deniability and murky language like the kind you are citing.
Let’s not forget: Scott Adams was a cartoonist. He was not some kind of sociologist or researcher on race relations. He went out of his way to go on a podcast and speak these opinions with no first hand experience or knowledge in any way.
He lived in Pleasanton, California where less than 2% of residents are black.
He has no experience or qualifications to know a damn thing about the subject. He didn’t even live near any black people - how would he know that they hate him?
No, he just wanted to say racist shit. That’s my read. If you read it different, that’s up to you.