Scott Adams — the sharp-tongued creator of Dilbert — is gone. He died on January 13, 2026, at age 68 after a fight with metastatic prostate cancer, a passing announced tearfully by his ex-wife Shelly Miles during a livestream where she read a farewell he had prepared.
For decades Adams held up a mirror to corporate America, turning the absurdities of management fads and bureaucratic nonsense into an art form that millions recognized and loved. Dilbert wasn’t fluff; it was a corrective, forcing bosses and cubicle dwellers alike to confront the ridiculous incentives and hollow rhetoric that ruin workplaces.
Like many outspoken figures who dared to buck the fashionable narratives of the day, Adams moved from satirist to provocateur — and paid a heavy price. After remarks in 2023 that triggered a fierce backlash, his strip was yanked from many publications and his career suffered a public purge, proving once again how fragile a voice can be when the media and gatekeepers decide you’re unacceptable.
Conservatives should be candid about what we’ve lost: a man who taught millions to spot nonsense, who didn’t dumb down his work to please every advertiser or editor. Free expression matters precisely because it allows for figures like Adams to grow, offend, and challenge — and then be judged by the public, not erased by institutions that confuse bluster for morality.
Adams was open about the final battle — announcing in May 2025 that his prostate cancer had metastasized and that he was in the fight of his life — and he kept communicating with his audience until the end, asking people to “pay it forward.” That public courage in the face of mortality was unmistakable, and it forced even his critics to reckon with the human being behind the headlines.
Across the conservative media landscape people have mourned a complicated, brilliant, and infuriating voice who spent a lifetime exposing absurdity wherever he saw it. Prominent figures and readers alike have acknowledged his influence on culture and commentary, and even those who disagreed with him must reckon with the emptier public square that follows when provocative thinkers are pushed to the margins.
Scott Adams leaves a mixed but unmistakable legacy: a cultural surgeon whose scalpel sometimes slipped, but who often diagnosed the rot that runs through corporate America and elite discourse. If conservatives are serious about defending free speech and fostering honest debate, we should mourn his loss and recommit to a marketplace of ideas where no one is too big to be criticized and no one is too small to be silenced.
