Cancel cartoons? What did “Dilbert” ever do to deserve such ignominy? (“‘Dilbert’ dropped from syndication as Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel, other newspapers cancel strip over cartoonist’s racist rant,” Feb. 26)

Let’s look at the evidence. As a once student of psychology (101), I recognize the action of Central Maine Newspapers to be a classic case of “misplaced anger.” It proposes to punish its own readers for something that poor Dilbert himself was never, ever, guilty of in the first place. Not once, to my memory, did the comic strip ever even hint of the sort of racist speech recently attributed to its writer, in a completely different forum, and which unfortunately now threatens to give “we, the readers” of Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel a “life sentence,” with non-parole separation, from arguably one of the funniest and mostly intelligent comics in newspaper publishing history.

The “misplaced” part of “anger” here is that it only hurts readers, and does little more than assuage the indignity felt by this newspaper. If the publisher of the newspapers, for example, had themselves similarly offended, followed by a guilt-by-association campaign by letter-writing readers, should the shareholders then shut down the newspapers, as if an appropriate response?

Instead, then, why not do the right thing here, too, and admit that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, and that the stereotypical, little engineer in the “funny” papers is no way a guilty party in the first place (especially during this the middle of 2023’s “Maine Engineering Week”). Reconsider, please.

Richard Hyatt

president

Maine Engineering Associates, Inc.

Augusta