Archive for the 'The Office' Category

Ok, I don’t mean this to be piling on Scott Kurtz. He does a lot of stuff that isn’t very classy, and he always has. Anyone who spends any time in our webcomicverse probably knows that. And the most recent controversy actually seemed kind of silly to me, really.

He posted a comic in which two of his characters salute the “side boob shot” in film. Some people got mad. Now this is a time when he can totally walk away. Some of his comics really do bug me, but this one is pretty low key. For one thing, it’s kind of playfully mocking this convention, not genuinely supporting it. And usually when he responds in his comics, it’s lame and makes things worse. But this comic’s sin is more just being boring and hackneyed than being offensive. Again, it doesn’t seem like the point of the comic is to respond to his critics, it seems to be to make a joke about his dad. At this point, I’m willing to just write it off as Kurtz is a bit dried up in the humor department, but not particularly offensive.

And then I read this. And it was in reading this that I finally got it. I know who Scott Kurtz is now. He’s David Brent/Michael Scott from The Office. These are the characters played by Ricky Gervais (British) and Steve Carell (American), the bosses. They think they’re funnier than they are, and they tend to say very offensive things. But they don’t realize it, because they’re not jerks. They’re just ignorant. I can almost imagine Kurtz saying, as Michael Scott does once, “Did you know that ‘gay’ used to mean happy? When I was growing up it meant ‘lame’. And now it means a man who makes love to other men.” Except he’d spell it “ghey”.

I believe that Scott Kurtz is at heart a nice guy. And I feel bad for him. So I’ve got a new slogan for you, Scott. Maybe it’ll help.