682: Not the Brightest Bulbs Out There

Explanation
Inspiration came randomly while looking through Pearls Before Swine strips of the time period at a time shortly after Scott Adams's syndicate dropped Dilbert over Adams's controversial views. Both the mention of whether one can separate Adams from his character as well as the comparison between Adams and Bill Cosby was inspired by mentions elsewhere on the Internet over whether one could truly separate Cosby from his The Cosby Show character, Dr. Cliff Huxtable. Neither Adams nor Cosby are directly mentioned by name in the author's notes.

There is a case of Spared by the Adaptation in play here, as Dilbert is stated to be merely conked out. The strips that followed in the few days after the original strip stated that Dilbert had died from his injuries.

Other explanations can be found within the author's notes themselves.

The author writes
The Godfather this certainly isn't...

Nowadays, I'm sure many people would cheer at Snuffles for conking out Dilbert, but that would be assuming that Dilbert as a character shares his views with his own now heavily-controversial cartoonist. I assume there would be a lot of people making that assumption, much like there are a lot of people who see Dr. Cliff Huxtable as heavily tainted in the same fashion as his portrayer who I dare not name (and I'm probably going to catch heavy flak for even mentioning the character's name—yes, the portrayer is indeed that tainted)...

Anyway, nobody in this piece is anywhere close to the brightest bulb in the bunch. Rat's been known to hold grudges over petty noodle incidents (it's probably best we NOT know why he'd want to go after the Square Root of Minus Garfield top dogs; odds are he should be targeting an individual contributor rather than the people who put those things up), and has been known to act before he thinks. As far as the bulk of readers might know, mezzacotta probably doesn't even have an actual office; can you even make a wrong turn at Albuquerque in a situation like that? Guard Duck and Snuffles are not the best enforcers of the bunch, and let's face it, nobody ever thought Dilbert was employee-of-the-month material even when his cartoonist was not heavily-controversial...

Original Pearls Before Swine strip: 2009-10-09.

Transcript
First panel header: Rat's scheme to take out the 'Square Root of Minus Garfield' editor {Rat is seated at his desk in a chair with a monogrammed "R", wearing sunglasses, on a cell phone} Rat: Hello? Guard Duck (on phone): Hello, sir...It's me, Guard Duck...Listen, our plan hit a little snag... Rat: {having taken off his sunglasses} What kind of snag? Guard Duck (on phone): Well, sir, we looked for the office of your 'Mezzacotta', but...we took a wrong turn at Alberquerque, and...I think we pummeled the wrong guy. Rat: Who the @#*@ did you pummel?!? {cut over to a phone-carrying Guard Duck, a baseball bat-carrying Snuffles, and a conked-out Dilbert} Guard Duck: You tell him.