nd overly large tip. I appreciate it. So Dilbert is now fully canceled in all newspapers, calendars, books. Because my syndication company who does the newspaper syndication, they sell it to the newspapers and they also provide it to all the calendars and the books. So they decided they couldn't take the heat. By the way, I don't blame them. It's not a terrible decision. By the way, I don't blame it. But all, and I expect them to be professional about it and I will be professional too. So it's a very long relationship that's ending. But don't give them a hard time. It's the newspapers who pressured them and they have a business model. They have a responsibility to the people who work there. So there were a lot of complaints from other artists. Have you ever heard that artists say bad things about me? Have you ever heard that? It's the most consistent. Artists say bad things about me anyway.

So Dilbert, whenever that winds down, I don't know how instant it is, it will not be available at Dilbert.com I don't think because I'm not going to manage it. And it won't be available in any form except whatever's already in stores I guess or already in the pipeline. So the media has untethered me. I'm untethered. I'm not sure if they want that but that's what happened anyway. Dilbert will be available still every day on the Locals platform for subscribers along with lots of other content including these live streams. So if you'd like to support, let's say I don't know if it's supporting me or it's putting a thumb in the eye of the newspapers who canceled me, one or the other. If you'd like to be part of that, the Locals community, five bucks a month if you buy an annual membership.

All right. Well, let's talk about this issue. So the canceling, if you look at all the newspapers and also my syndicate, I would characterize them this way. It was a bunch of rich white people, you know, the leaders of newspapers. And how did this indicate? So it's a bunch of well-off white people who do not live around Black people and they decided to cancel me because I thought that what they're doing is a good strategy. So I agreed. I agreed with their strategy and then they canceled me because nobody wants to ask them where they live or why. Now again I'm not saying that any of these people are racist. I'm saying that they probably used a proxy and said well you know that's one of the ways you know where to live and you want to avoid crime. Not avoiding Black people, that would be racist, but just avoiding low-income crime areas. So they've all done that as I've recommended but they canceled me for recommending it. And now there are a bunch of made-up reasons. Because the actual thing that people are mad at me about they all agree with. So nobody disagrees with my two main claims. That you should treat all individuals as individuals, no discrimination. Everybody agrees with that except racists I guess, which I disavow. And then the second point that you should avoid anything that statistically looks like a bad idea for you personally. Nobody's disagreed with that. Have you noticed? The actual claim nobody's disagreed with. Not Black people. In fact the main supporters I've seen lately were Black and they were saying yeah if you listen to it in context it makes perfect sense. And a number of Black people are telling me they did the same thing. You know they looked at their neighborhood and said you know I think I'll live over here, looks safer. So I'm getting agreement from Black pundits, from white pundits. And then when I asked the people who were mad at me and mostly it's name calling, I asked them what is it you're actually mad at.

I'll give you an example. When my syndicate canceled me they did a press release I guess on social media and they said that they oppose hate and discrimination. Do they know that was my point? My point was to try to avoid hate and discrimination. That was my entire point. Is if somebody, if you believe that there's a group of people who have a statistical likelihood to discriminate against you, not any individual but just collectively there's an impulse there, then you should get away from that. And I would call that, I specifically called the people I wanted to get away from but this was hyperbole and this is overstating it. Everybody who understands hyperbole knows this was hyperbole, meaning an exaggeration, when I said that Black people were like a hate group. And that was based on, I'll talk about that in a moment, but it wasn't because I hated anybody. In fact hate wasn't even part of the conversation, was it? But has hate been any part of the conversation? I don't think so because I don't hate anybody. But I was concerned that somebody hated me. Nobody specific. So I'm not even sure that hate was right. Or I think, how about, yeah, and discrimination is the other thing I was trying to avoid. So if you avoid discrimination you are discriminating. Is that true? If you avoid discrimination you're discriminating. It is true. It's definitely true.

All right. I hear some other things people said. They know what's in my racist heart because of all of my years of racist tweeting, which is zero. There is zero. Any other thing that you will find anywhere in my Twitter that would suggest any racism or anything, right? There's nothing there. And believe me, if there were anything there you don't think you'd be seeing it on social media by now. It's the first thing they do. They go through your old tweets and then they show that your new tweet is part of the pattern. Have you noticed that that doesn't exist? Have you noticed that where they go and they find part of my pattern is not there. So there are people who think that I went my entire career and just like snapped or something. So no, there are not years of racist tweets. There are zero of them.

Other people say my big problem is that I conflated class and race. They said that after I tweeted everybody knows that class and race are not the same thing and I treat them differently. Who doesn't know that exactly? That's one of my biggest public statements is I agree with Dave Chappelle basically that we're treating race as the primary variable but it's always been economics. Every time we treat race as the way to understand anything it doesn't work. I've said that forever. But class does. If you look at class it explains everything, right?

So there's a PhD fellow who I'm going to talk to, a Black gentleman who wants to talk to me, and his complaint was... What, that's not true. Somebody's sending me that my Twitter account was suspended. That can't be true. Let's see. You're joking, right? No, it's still there. All right, that was a good prank though but it's still there. Still there.

All right. Now, so I have never conflated race and class and people imagining that I did. Nobody does that, do they? Or if they do it's pretty dumb. I'm also accused of, they know that I'm a racist they say because of my right-wing politics. Would any of you who have watched me consider me right-wing? What's your opinion? Do I present as right wing to you? Yeah, everybody who knows me knows the answer is no. I'm not right wing. Left of Bernie.

All right. The other thing they say is I called Black Americans a group, as I said, but that was hyperbole and within context everybody knows what that means but it's hyperbole. And that I espoused racism. Did I espouse racism or did I say you should try to get away from it? I said you should try to get away from it, which apparently is racism itself. But what do you do if you can't discriminate? How do you get away from it or do you just accept it? Is that a requirement?

All right. Here's my big question to you. Are there, look, let me see if there are any Black Americans watching right now. I have a question for you. Could you identify yourself? Any Black Americans who are watching the live stream right now, just if you're willing identify yourself because I have a question for you. All right, we got a few. Here's the question. If you were looking for a home, let's say you were shopping for a new home or an apartment, and the place that you were looking at had Republican political signs around it and let's say you saw the neighbors wearing MAGA hats or something, would you feel comfortable living there? Would you feel comfortable in the neighborhood of red hat wearing Republicans? I'm seeing no. Okay, so yeah there's some yeses and there's some nos. Some yeses.

Now suppose, and I know why there's a difference. Let me tell you why there's a difference. The difference is that conservative Blacks already understand conservatives. So if you're actually a conservative yourself you understand that they're not judging you by your color. If you're not a conservative you think they are. Am I right? But Black conservatives know that's not happening. In fact it's the opposite. They know that on the Republican side Republicans are really, really strict about it's not about anything but your contribution. You know, what are you doing? It's about your activities. Now that's not to say that there aren't a bunch of racist Republicans. You know, there are racists in all groups. But you saw that in the comments there were a number of people who said I wouldn't feel comfortable.

I'm going to make Teddy the... Let me talk about the victim narrative in a minute because that's the NPC comment. There are two NPC comments. I'll just say this now. One trying to explain the difference between the First Amendment and private companies deciding to cancel me. And a lot of people tried to explain that to me this week because they think I don't understand that. Now only in NPC, like a non-person, non-player character, would believe that I don't understand that. And that when I say that free speech is expensive that somehow I've lost the distinction between private companies acting and a government rule. This is what you can say and what you can't say. I do understand that I do. Secondly the other NPC comment, like the lowest level of analysis, is that I'm playing the victim. Playing the victim. How could I describe this situation without you saying that? How in the world could I simply objectively describe what happened without it sounding like you think I'm a victim? Have you heard me say oh now I won't be able to eat? No, no. I'm kind of the opposite of playing the victim but I am describing what happened.

For example I incorrectly tweeted today that I lost three careers by being white and somebody corrected me. I was like shoot, I was pretty sure I had that right. The first one was Crocker National Bank where my boss told me that white men could not be promoted directly. Now some people questioned whether that ever happened and you just have to ask anybody who lived in San Francisco in the 80s or 90s. It happened to everybody. Like it was more like a universal thing than some weird thing that happened to one guy. So Crocker Bank said I couldn't be promoted. And then I went to Pacific Bell and after a few years they called me in and my boss told me directly you can't be promoted because you're white and you're male. So I left to become a cartoonist where it wouldn't matter what color I was. How'd that work out? Do you think I would be canceled if I were not white? I know the answer but just answer. Do you think if I were not white that I would be canceled for saying exactly what I said, saying exactly the same words? Now there's not even a small chance. There isn't the slightest chance. Now this is purely racial. This is purely racial. You all know it. There's not a single yes going by. There's not a single person who believes I would have been canceled if I had not been white. Nobody. Yeah, somebody says yes if Asian I suppose to run MSNBC. Are they talking about me?

All right. So I think we got agreement that it makes sense to not live near a population of people who have been primed to have a bad opinion of you. Does anybody disagree with the statement that it's good personal strategy to go where you don't think people are going to have a bad attitude about you? Agreement. Let me explain one dissenter. I had one dissenter who said yes I would go to an area where I