Comment on the toon:
As a public figure with an immense profile, billionaire Bill Gates is seen as everything from a planetary sugar daddy to a eugenics-mad depopulator. Though he is worshipped by some and vilified by others, it’s safe to say he’s generally admired in the western world.
He’s been called both a philanthropist and a “philanthrocapitalist.” One thing is certain; from his days as Microsoft CEO onward, Gates has always played a long game. I prefer to call him a “planthropist.”
Yet his plans haven’t always worked out smoothly. Not that long ago, Gates was widely regarded as a digital robber baron. He ruthlessly crushed any competition and his company’s market domination helped dismantle the widespread culture of freely shared, nonprofit PC software.
Surely he’s mellowed over time, because assessments from others in the computer industry, as told in the 1992 bio Hard Drive, conjured up an arrested adolescent on a take-no-prisoners power trip.
Gates is tenacious. That's what's scary…he always comes back, like Chinese water torture. His form of entertainment is tearing people to shreds. - Stewart Alsop, editor of P.C. Letter.
I half-jokingly say there is only one person with fewer friends than Saddam Hussein. And that's Bill Gates. - Paul Grayson, cofounder of Micrographx.
Imagine an extremely smart, billionaire genius who is 14 years old and subject to temper tantrums. - an unidentified former Microsoft project manager.
Bill Gates wants it all. And he's on his way to getting it. - Tim Bajarin, a computer industry consultant.
You may or may not remember, but Microsoft’s market predations eventually caught the attention of US regulators. A late-nineties federal antitrust lawsuit pegged the bundling the default Microsoft Internet browser with the MS operating system as a monopolist attempt to control access to the Internet. This was well-known at the time and much in the news.
The judge in the case ruled against Microsoft in 2001, ordering it to be broken up into smaller companies. Microsoft appealed and after a settlement with the Feds, Gates changed gears somewhat. In Janary 2006, he announced he would be dedicating more time to his philanthropy. In 2008, he took on a chrysalis form as nonexecutive chairman of Microsoft, bursting forth a few years later as the Monarch butterfly of global health care.
Hmmm...where have we seen that movie before? Ah yes...John D. Rockefeller.
In the early 20th century, the oil baron was accused of taking a wrecking ball to the free market, with his predations extending into the rail industry. A judge in the 1911 antitrust case against Standard Oil ordered its breakup into smaller companies (today’s “Seven Sisters”). Old JD went off to lick his wounds and rebranded himself as a warm-hearted philanthropist, focusing on...wait for it...global health care.
As Mark Twain observed, “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” JD’s resurrection from oil industry robber baron to the chief architect of allopathic medicine rhymed a century later with the PR rehabilitation of Gates from software sinner to health care saviour.
Ironically, a guy with no medical training who made a name for himself flogging virus-plagued computers is now a primary figure in the global response to…a virus. (Fun fact: since rebranding himself as a wealthy benefactor the sick, Gates has almost doubled his net worth to $149 billion. He’s reportedly now the fourth richest person on Earth.)
The Media Influence
The late-nineties antitrust case against Microsoft never comes up in today’s glowing assessments of Gates in The New York Times, Washington Post and other respectable media outlets. In effect, the story has been largely forgotten. Why would that be?
A while back I came across a 2016 Guardian article critical of the influence in the developing world of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (along with - surprise - The Rockefeller Foundation). Intriguingly, since 2010 Gates has been funding the Guardian’s work on global development. Yet surely he would toss bags of money at big news outlets only to advance the cause of independent journalism, not to skew it - right? He wouldn’t be trying to - ahem - inoculate himself and his foundation against bad press, would he?
By 2017, Gates was the second biggest private donor to the World Health Organization. Besides having his hands all over WHO and other global health-related bodies, exactly how much money is Bill dispensing to the fourth estate? Here’s last year’s findings from The Columbia Journalism Review:
“I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. It included operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as subgrants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’s funding into the fourth estate.”
- Tim Schwab, The Columbia Journalism Review
“Insofar as journalists are supposed to scrutinize wealth and power, Gates should probably be one of the most investigated people on earth—not the most admired,” the author concluded.
I have to come to Bill’s defense here a bit. He’s not the total Antichrist some have made him out to be. Consider his recent breakup, which I’ve heard was based on irreconcilable differences. Bill apparently wanted to polish off most of the world’s population quickly and humanely, while Melinda wanted it done slowly and horribly.
(Sorry, bad joke….couldn’t resist.)
So philanthropist, philanthrocapitalist, or planthropist? You decide.
I used to work with people who knew him, and to know him was to hate him, they said. BG was and still is one of the hardest of hard ball players, and he is now so powerful that he gets to set the rules of the game itself. And he surely knows how to play the PR game. Remember that slick piece of shit called Inside Bill's Mind, on Netflix? That is one of the best pieces of propaganda I have ever seen...excellent post, Geoff.
yeah, I know what you mean...perhaps we should form 'neighbourhood scream groups' and have regular sessions in front of the tube . That way, we're all in this together....?