Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Interview With Scott Adams
Aired October 21, 2003 - 14:42 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, listen up. office workers. If you're confined to a pod right now pretending to work on some pointless project to please your pointy-haired boss -- and you're instead watching us...
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: ... aimlessly banking away on your keyboard, have we got a segment for you now. We're talking "The Way of the Weasel," which happens to be the subtitle of the latest "Dilbert" from the inimitable Scott Adams. He joins us from his home base of San Francisco to tell us about the book, his weasel and his strip which is now seen in 2,000 newspapers, 65 countries, 25 languages.
Good to have you with us, Scott.
SCOTT ADAMS, "DILBERT" CREATOR: Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: How well does this column translate into Farsi?
(LAUGHTER)
ADAMS: You know, the beauty of it is I'll never know.
O'BRIEN: I mean, I guess these jokes are universal. There are pods everywhere, right?
ADAMS: Well, you know, everywhere there are cubicles. It doesn't work so much in Japan they don't have the cubicles and they don't want to be, you know, ranking on their bosses as much as we like to do it over here. But everywhere they speak English it usually works.
O'BRIEN: All right, all right. Fair enough. Now "The Way of the Weasel," so much of your script is about weasels and dealing with weasels that this book is, I guess, in a sense an obvious outgrowth of what you do, right?
ADAMS: I thought it was a very clever outgrowth. Was it obvious?
ADAMS: Well, it's clever and obvious maybe. I guess it's obvious looking at it. You came up with it. It's easy for me to say that now.
All right, let's do this. I want to just show you a couple of the strips in here because some of these caught my eye. Can you guys read that at home? I hope so.
Left panel, "Here's my cost estimate. I'll start the job on Monday. When I say Monday" -- wait a minute which one do we have on the air? "Here's my cost estimate. I'll start the job on Monday. When I say Monday I'm referring to the service industry space time continuum. I'm not supposed to show you this but check out our calender." And Dilbert says, "No Monday?" speaking to the contractor there.
So you sort of take this outside the office a little bit and talk about weasels everywhere.
ADAMS: Yes, if you have ever had anybody do any work on your home you know that when they say I'll show up, you know, Tuesday, they might be meaning February. You can never be sure.
So, yes, I try to expand that beyond the office into all the weasels in your life.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's try to get an office one up there, if we could. I want to show one more just to give you a sense of this. While we're putting that together, define "weasel" for us.
ADAMS: A weasel is anybody who is trying to get away with something. So it's in that gray area between good ethical behavior and things that would actually send you to prison for the rest of your life, which is where most of business activity happens.
All right. And speaking of business activity, here's a classic Dilbert setting, the pointy haired boss there at the table, and you've got -- that's Wally, right, along with Dilbert there. And Wally reports -- Wally doesn't really care very much.
"I'm pleased to report that I had no problems this week. I only had issues, opportunities and valuable learning experiences." And the pointy haired boss says, "Did you do any work?" "It didn't seem necessary," says Wally.
That pretty much sums up weasel-dom right there, doesn't it?
(LAUGHTER)
ADAMS: You know, there's some amount of buzzwords that can make any bad idea sound good, and there's some amount of PowerPoint slides that will make any ignorance seem like brilliance. So it's all part of the weasel process.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And of course a good weasel will steal that PowerPoint presentation which is also in the book.
Let's talk a little bit about your poll. You're out there trying to get some input at your Web site, Dilbert.com. And there's several categories, Weaseliest individuals which starts at George W. Bush and ends with down there at the bottom with Bill Bennett.
Weaseliest organizations, Recording Industry Association of America, down to "The New York Times." And the Weaseliest country, France at the top and so forth.
But the profession is one I want to get into here. Weaseliest professions, accountants, lawyers, politicians, news media, oil executives and tobacco executive.
What's the current tally right now on who's -- is it winning or losing would be the correct?
ADAMS: Well, I think what you have in front of you is probably the winners, so you're actually seeing that the politicians came in first this year, beating out news media for the weaseliest profession. Last year news media was No. 1, the weaseliest. But apparently you're doing something right, so keep up the good work, you're going down the list.
O'BRIEN: Politicians way ahead.
(LAUGHTER)
ADAMS: Well, you're still ahead of tobacco company executives who actually admit they are killing people. So, you know, you can't be too proud yet. But, yes, the politicians are...
O'BRIEN: It's a tough crowd, isn't it, when you get in that group?
Now as far as weaseliest individuals, the winner by far was George W. Bush, our president. Right behind him, Michael Moore. How do you explain that one?
ADAMS: Yes, it kind of balances out. Well, Of course, these are not my opinions, these are the voters who rank them. But Michael Moore I put on the list of candidates just because his book sold more than mine did last year and I felt that could not go unnoticed. But I was surprised he got so many votes.
Now not so surprised that President Bush got a lot of votes because he's got an MBA and people have this natural distrust of people who have an MBA. In fact, I think a lot of people believe he took the job just as some kind of money making pyramid scheme, as far as I can tell.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: That's kind of an Amway deal.
All right, Scott Adams, "Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel" is his latest offering. The poll -- is it too late to participate in this thing or is this a running poll?
ADAMS: Well you can see the results now at Dilbert.com and we'll have another one next year to see if you can move up in the rankings.
O'BRIEN: All right. I misspoke. I thought you could still participate. Nevertheless, it's fun reading. Thanks for being with us, Scott Adams. And we appreciate your work every day. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired October 21, 2003 - 14:42 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, listen up. office workers. If you're confined to a pod right now pretending to work on some pointless project to please your pointy-haired boss -- and you're instead watching us...
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: ... aimlessly banking away on your keyboard, have we got a segment for you now. We're talking "The Way of the Weasel," which happens to be the subtitle of the latest "Dilbert" from the inimitable Scott Adams. He joins us from his home base of San Francisco to tell us about the book, his weasel and his strip which is now seen in 2,000 newspapers, 65 countries, 25 languages.
Good to have you with us, Scott.
SCOTT ADAMS, "DILBERT" CREATOR: Thanks for having me.
O'BRIEN: How well does this column translate into Farsi?
(LAUGHTER)
ADAMS: You know, the beauty of it is I'll never know.
O'BRIEN: I mean, I guess these jokes are universal. There are pods everywhere, right?
ADAMS: Well, you know, everywhere there are cubicles. It doesn't work so much in Japan they don't have the cubicles and they don't want to be, you know, ranking on their bosses as much as we like to do it over here. But everywhere they speak English it usually works.
O'BRIEN: All right, all right. Fair enough. Now "The Way of the Weasel," so much of your script is about weasels and dealing with weasels that this book is, I guess, in a sense an obvious outgrowth of what you do, right?
ADAMS: I thought it was a very clever outgrowth. Was it obvious?
ADAMS: Well, it's clever and obvious maybe. I guess it's obvious looking at it. You came up with it. It's easy for me to say that now.
All right, let's do this. I want to just show you a couple of the strips in here because some of these caught my eye. Can you guys read that at home? I hope so.
Left panel, "Here's my cost estimate. I'll start the job on Monday. When I say Monday" -- wait a minute which one do we have on the air? "Here's my cost estimate. I'll start the job on Monday. When I say Monday I'm referring to the service industry space time continuum. I'm not supposed to show you this but check out our calender." And Dilbert says, "No Monday?" speaking to the contractor there.
So you sort of take this outside the office a little bit and talk about weasels everywhere.
ADAMS: Yes, if you have ever had anybody do any work on your home you know that when they say I'll show up, you know, Tuesday, they might be meaning February. You can never be sure.
So, yes, I try to expand that beyond the office into all the weasels in your life.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's try to get an office one up there, if we could. I want to show one more just to give you a sense of this. While we're putting that together, define "weasel" for us.
ADAMS: A weasel is anybody who is trying to get away with something. So it's in that gray area between good ethical behavior and things that would actually send you to prison for the rest of your life, which is where most of business activity happens.
All right. And speaking of business activity, here's a classic Dilbert setting, the pointy haired boss there at the table, and you've got -- that's Wally, right, along with Dilbert there. And Wally reports -- Wally doesn't really care very much.
"I'm pleased to report that I had no problems this week. I only had issues, opportunities and valuable learning experiences." And the pointy haired boss says, "Did you do any work?" "It didn't seem necessary," says Wally.
That pretty much sums up weasel-dom right there, doesn't it?
(LAUGHTER)
ADAMS: You know, there's some amount of buzzwords that can make any bad idea sound good, and there's some amount of PowerPoint slides that will make any ignorance seem like brilliance. So it's all part of the weasel process.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And of course a good weasel will steal that PowerPoint presentation which is also in the book.
Let's talk a little bit about your poll. You're out there trying to get some input at your Web site, Dilbert.com. And there's several categories, Weaseliest individuals which starts at George W. Bush and ends with down there at the bottom with Bill Bennett.
Weaseliest organizations, Recording Industry Association of America, down to "The New York Times." And the Weaseliest country, France at the top and so forth.
But the profession is one I want to get into here. Weaseliest professions, accountants, lawyers, politicians, news media, oil executives and tobacco executive.
What's the current tally right now on who's -- is it winning or losing would be the correct?
ADAMS: Well, I think what you have in front of you is probably the winners, so you're actually seeing that the politicians came in first this year, beating out news media for the weaseliest profession. Last year news media was No. 1, the weaseliest. But apparently you're doing something right, so keep up the good work, you're going down the list.
O'BRIEN: Politicians way ahead.
(LAUGHTER)
ADAMS: Well, you're still ahead of tobacco company executives who actually admit they are killing people. So, you know, you can't be too proud yet. But, yes, the politicians are...
O'BRIEN: It's a tough crowd, isn't it, when you get in that group?
Now as far as weaseliest individuals, the winner by far was George W. Bush, our president. Right behind him, Michael Moore. How do you explain that one?
ADAMS: Yes, it kind of balances out. Well, Of course, these are not my opinions, these are the voters who rank them. But Michael Moore I put on the list of candidates just because his book sold more than mine did last year and I felt that could not go unnoticed. But I was surprised he got so many votes.
Now not so surprised that President Bush got a lot of votes because he's got an MBA and people have this natural distrust of people who have an MBA. In fact, I think a lot of people believe he took the job just as some kind of money making pyramid scheme, as far as I can tell.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: That's kind of an Amway deal.
All right, Scott Adams, "Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel" is his latest offering. The poll -- is it too late to participate in this thing or is this a running poll?
ADAMS: Well you can see the results now at Dilbert.com and we'll have another one next year to see if you can move up in the rankings.
O'BRIEN: All right. I misspoke. I thought you could still participate. Nevertheless, it's fun reading. Thanks for being with us, Scott Adams. And we appreciate your work every day. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
