It's almost impossible to work in or with any large organization, and not conclude that Scott Adams is a freakin' genius. His recent e-voting satire strip had bite, but it wasn't as good as "Mission Impertinent." Back in 1998, Adams posed as a consultant to Logitech's executive team under a fictitious name:
"My goal is to see if a group of executives will allow somebody who has very few credentials, except for good hair, to come into their meeting and get them to write a mission statement which is so impossibly complicated that it has no real content." - Scott Adams
No references were checked, no-one checked the name, and no-one asked about his credentials; so he held the session. As the full account shows, he succeeded in his mission, whereupon the CEO revealed the gag on his executive and had a nice little chat about groupthink. Now that was one smart CEO; no wonder I tend to like their products a lot. Adams, meanwhile, won a well-deserved 1998 Orwell Award for that one.
He deserves every penny of those multi-millions he earns.
I always feel the need to qualify -- he may well be a genius when it comes to office politics. He is not a genius re: history, macroeconomics, or "real" politics.
I used to read his blog until I got sick for questions like, "So, why do we support Israel, anyway?" followed by ignoring or dismissing every non-conspiracist reply.
Glancing at the most recent winners of the Orwell Award, I'm not sure that it's an honor to receive one. I don't want anything that Seymour Hersch has.
Or that was given to Noam Chomsky (twice).
BTW: does it strike anyone as a bit "Orwellian" to award propagandists an award for ostensibly critiquing propaganda?