It’s hard to feel sorry for “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams.

No, that’s not correct.

It’s impossible to feel sorry for him.

Adams said something that was both mean and dumb. Saying it cost him a great deal.

Now, he’s trying to present himself as a martyr for the First Amendment and free speech.

He’s not.

Here’s what happened:

On Feb. 22 during his nightly podcast and YouTube live stream, Adams said he wanted to talk about what he called a “provocative” new Rasmussen poll.

“They said, ‘Do you agree with or disagree with the statement “It’s OK to be white”?’” Adams told his audience. “That was an actual question.”

Adams continued: “47 percent of Black respondents were not willing to say it’s OK to be white. That’s actually­—that’s, like, a real poll.”

Uh, no.

The integrity of Rasmussen polls long has been questioned—largely because those polls feature leading questions designed to provide click bait for right-leaning citizens. Their methodology also is suspect.

Counting on a Rasmussen poll to make a credible argument in the public sphere is a bit like citing “Star Wars” as a source in a scholarly research paper on astronomy. Doing so might liven up the proceedings but it’s not likely to encourage anyone to take you or your argument seriously.

That’s even more true if you fudge the numbers.

The Rasmussen poll in question included 1,000 people, 130 of whom were Black. Of those 130, 34—yes, a whopping 34—said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that it was okay to be white.

That works out to about 26 percent, not 47 percent.

The fact that he inflated the percentage by including those who said “not sure” didn’t deter Adams.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people—according to this poll, not according to me,” he said, “that’s a hate group.”

He went on to say that white people should “get the hell away from Black people.”

It didn’t take long for what Adams was shoveling to hit the fan.

Newspaper after newspaper dropped his comic strip. Soon, his syndicate did and the publisher he had for a book dropped him, too.

Within days of his rant, Adams’ audience had shrunk so much its members could fit comfortably in a phone booth.

What followed was predictable.

The speed with which right-wing blowhards transform themselves from chest-thumping provocateurs into whiny self-proclaimed victims can be breathtaking. Adams began to complain that he had been cancelled because of concerns about political correctness while asserting at the same time that no one disagreed with him.

That explains how Adams got himself into this fix.

He really isn’t that bright and just doesn’t get it.

If your employer fires you and all your clients cut ties with you, they’re saying they disagree with you. They disagree with you so much that they no longer want to be associated with you.

Adams suffers from the same misapprehension that many self-pitying conservatives do. He thinks that the First Amendment protects not just his right to say whatever dumb or mean thing occurs to him but that it also insulates him from having people notice that he’s said something dumb or mean, much less react to it.

He’s right about the first part.

He is allowed to say whatever stupid or ugly thing he wants to, so long as it is not, for example, libelous.

But the First Amendment does not spare Adams or anyone else from facing the consequences of saying something racist or deliberately hurtful. The same free speech rights that allow Adams to say things that anger other people also allows those other people to tell him he’s wrong or that he’s a jerk.

Similarly, when a newspaper or a syndicate decides not to publish him because he’s said something offensive, that newspaper or syndicate is exercising its First Amendment rights, too. Just as the law cannot stop us from saying things we wish to say, it also cannot compel us to say things we don’t wish to say. No private entity can be forced to publish something with which it disagrees or finds abhorrent.

Scott Adams is no victim of political correctness.

He said something disagreeable and many, many, many free people disagreed.

That’s how freedom works.

So, if he’s a victim of anything, he’s a victim of his own cruel stupidity.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.