The battle lines over the erasure of history seem very clear.

On one side, we have activists who want to erase history. On the opposing side, we have the activists’ antagonists who say that we cannot erase history.

But then, in the middle, we have me, with a distinctive dilemma.

The only history I would like to erase is my own.

Here’s the problem. Despite the terms of public contention, the process of erasing history has not been invented. Yes, you can ignore it; you can obscure it. History responds to its repression by biding its time and patiently awaiting the moment of its resurgence.

And now for my dilemma: I have variable performance judging people. For instance, I have a long history of gratitude to Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

For decades, I have experienced his mockery of bureaucracies, petty tyrants, and cumbersome procedures as a personal gift to me.

Over the last year, unexpected twists and turns in my life enhanced and elevated that gratitude.

Consider the strip that ran on February 9, 2023. Hit with a sudden awakening, a character exclaims, “HEY!!! I just realized that my employer doesn’t have my best interests in mind!”

In an old-time radio custom, DJs often introduced a record by saying, “This song is dedicated to so-and-so.” My encounter with that Feb. 9 Dilbert cartoon was a virtual reenactment of that custom. The cartoon was so clearly meant for me that an explicit statement, “This strip is dedicated to Patty Limerick by Scott Adams,” was totally unnecessary.

So what am I supposed to do now?

I will perform a maneuver that I hope will set a precedent for others: I will state directly that I find Scott Adams’ statements on race to be repulsive, and I will refuse to deny that I loved his comic strip.

That wasn’t so hard.

Before condemning my inconsistency, consider an alternative: why not make fun of my muddled responses to the complexity of human character? And this next story will give you an opportunity to practice laughing at me.

Several years ago, I learned that a very successful writer, whose work I very much admired and who I knew and liked personally, had treated people dismissively and even cruelly. This man’s books occupied a full shelf in my bookcases.

What to do?

I moved his books to the garage.

When I mentioned this to a friend, she said, “The ways things are going these days, our garages are going to fill up with books.”

This is what I have had the opportunity to learn about myself.

Thanks to my variable performance in judging people, I will never arrive at high-ground purity in my enthusiasms, affections, and affiliations.

And, with that recognition, I am freed to be forthright in admitting when I have learned new information that I must incorporate into my thinking, embracing the paradox I cannot dodge.

I am dismayed by what I have learned about Scott Adams’ attitudes on race, but there will be no erasing of my history of gratitude to him. On more times than I would ever be able to count, that troubled soul transformed my dismay over human conduct into life-affirming laughter.

Patty Limerick is the director of the University of Colorado Applied History Initiative and can be reached at patricia.limerick@colorado.edu.

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