Along with most people who live in a cubicle, I'm a big fan of Dilbert.  I had thought that perhaps it had "jumped the shark" after the death and reincarnation of Asok.  But then I was brought back into the fold with Wally being fired and re-hired, and I also thought last week's series with Jesus (pronounced Hay-Soos) was pretty funny too.  Granted, it does poke fun at Christianity a bit, but I think people ought to have a healthy sense of humor about these things.  If you choose to always view things with the worst of intentions (as often times happens on the internet), then you'll most likely be offended.  Otherwise, I think its easy to have a good laugh.

I also read Scott Adam's blog pretty regularly, and I think I have a pretty good handle on his world view.  Granted, sometimes its hard to tell whether he's being sarcastic about something, saying something just to get a reaction, or being honest.  However, if you read his blog for long enough, you start to see certain patterns.  With that said, here is a portion of Friday's blog post:

This week's series in Dilbert caused quite a stir. It featured a new guy in the office whose name is pronounced hay-soos and spelled Jesus. I drew those strips a few months ago, and in my typical careless way I didn't realize they would be running around Easter time. Oops.
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As you might imagine, I got a lot of e-mail about this strip. Comments were about evenly divided between people who are deeply offended and people who think it was my best work yet. Interestingly, the people most amused often described themselves as religious, and those offended often noted that they were not especially religious.

My favorite rhetorical question, which I received an alarming number of times, was "Why don't you mock Mohammed next? Huh? Why not?"

Well, aside from the blindingly obvious reason that I prefer life over death, I didn't realize I was making fun of Christianity this week. It's a standard cartoon practice to take well-known historical or fictional stories and put other characters in those roles. I did the same thing with The Wizard of Oz, and no one thought I was insulting Dorothy.

First things first, I believe him when he says the timing is coincidental, though you'd think his syndicate would be smarter.  He has blogged often about the nature of the cartoon business and how far ahead you had to create your work.  As for the part about not making fun of Christianity... that's a hard pill to swallow.  I think he's lying his ass off.  Either that, or I have to read his post much more narrowly.  Maybe he didn't think he was insulting Christianity, but he sure as hell knew that others would think he was insulting Christianity.

Of course, the part about Mohammed ought to make you think too.