Walter Isaccson, author of best-selling biographies and former editor of TIME, wrote this awestruck article about Bill Gates in 1997. At the time, Bill was the richest man in the world, his marriage to Melinda was new, and he hadn’t yet decided that he was the smartest man in the world and knew everything better than those who had worked in their profession for years. This is Bill Gates before he decided to reinvent American education. It’s also a fascinating peek into the lifestyle of zthe then richest man in the world (he’s #3 now, behind Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk). And it includes a curious detail about Bill’s personal life: once a year, he spends a weekend with a woman friend, where they commune and discuss weighty things.
Several news outlets reported that Melinda Gates began to meet with divorce lawyers in 2019 because of Bill’s relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, convicted pedophile. Melinda thought he was repulsive, Bill did not. Bill said he had neither a business relationship nor a friendship with Epstein. Whatever it was, Melinda did not like it.
Just days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bill left the Microsoft board because was in an inappropriate relationship with an employee:
Microsoft Corp. board members decided that Bill Gates needed to step down from its board in 2020 as they pursued an investigation into the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, people familiar with the matter said.
Members of the board tasked with the matter hired a law firm to conduct an investigation in late 2019 after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship over years with Mr. Gates, the people said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Power corrupts. Or maybe the willingness to be corrupt is a characteristic of gaining power in corporate America.
No one ever held Bill Gates accountable for his many failed policies that damaged teachers and students.
You have 😊
Sent from my iPhone Peter Goodman Ed in the Apple 917-816-4028
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Thank you, Diane. So agree.
a crucial point
Of course, testing advocates like Gates and Walton want to “hold teachers accountable” but deregulation fanatics about their both their personal and business behaviors.
Thank you, Diane, for always speaking out. You are fearless. Yes, the “small school” mania was so stupid. But billionaires don’t like to admit they’re wrong.
That Isaacson article is so obsequious it’s torture to read. How embarrassing.
He is not a good person. Polio is making a comeback after the Gates Foundation made it their priority to get rid of polio ten years ago. I’m not surprised it’s just another reason to give everyone another vaccine. He is also a pedophile.
I’m just disgusted by Gate’s womanizing. What is with these men in power? Do they really have to go after women over whom they have power?
Yes. And there are more to come, I am sure.
Diane, who cares!! His private life should be his life, we have an insatiable lust for the private lives of the rich and famous.. I disagree with Gates policies.. and many of the bored billionaires who are turning our nation into a plutocracy.. let’s concentrate on turning around their policies
Bill Gates’ attitude about women, as reflected in his conduct, becomes significant when he chooses to attack a public sector that had greater impact on advancing women to financial independence than any other in the nation.
Melinda Gates said that the issue that makes her lose sleep is women’s inequality. She has greater knowledge about her husband’s influence empire than anyone else.
You’re correct….BUT…..his private life became public life when he started telling everyone how they should live according to the self righteous Book of Gates and when he allowed his money to direct/dominate the social construct so that he could divert public tax dollars into his own coffers. Sorry……he deserves every bit of bad press that comes his way and I hope that ALL the lies come out.
Oh…and we can’t turn around their policies until we know the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The house of cards needs to collapse so that We the People can see how the house was built.
The Microsoft board cares about his private life and ousted him. The New York Times and other major media reported the story. Gates spends millions to buy favorable media coverage as the wisest man in the world. Too much boasting about your superiority to everyone else is called hubris and in Greek plays, hubris usually leads to humiliation.
Bill Gates has been intruding on people’s lives for a long time.
He sure has. Plus he’s wrecked so many.
I care. What one does speaks loudly.
I’m not excusing Gates’ behavior in any way but there is definitely a “boys will be boys” culture in Silicon Valley. Many of these guys had sort of missed their adolescence (for math camp & attending MIT at early ages) & were making up for lost time.
While Melinda is bound to be severely pissed about his years of infidelity, I wonder how much of this was leaked from her legal team–because Bill G is somebody that Seattle LOVES to gossip about. I don’t doubt the media outlets have people lined up dying to talk about the Gates family.
Bill’s messing around, in public education and extramarital adventures, is all of a piece with his sense of entitlement.
He cost my district a lot of money and sent it in the wrong direction.
There is something unseemly about letting someone keeps company with a convicted pedophile dictate public education policy from K through higher ed.
It’s like letting Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer dictate how we deal with serial killers.
I am so not surprised that he had an affair. I read a quote from Meghan McCain on The View: “Men in power cheat on their wives, and water is wet, and there’s gambling in Casablanca, okay? I mean, sorry, it’s not revelatory.” This news just adds to my unfavorable opinion of him.
She would know.
Gates’ spokesman denies that Bill used Epstein in an effort to get a Nobel Prize.
DNMagasinet (media in Oslo, 10-2-2020) reported that Gates and Epstein were guests of the Nobel Prize committee chair at his home in 2013.
The record shows Gates’ spokespersons have been corrected on occasion after investigations found the pronouncements untrue.
The Nobel Prize committee chair allegedly lied about contact with Epstein in 2013.
The Pro-Bill Prize
A Pro-Bill Prize in hubris
Is what I do deserve
And though it may sound hum’rous
I’ve really got some nerve
My trademarked “data driving”
Will really get me far
Conceitful and contriving
I really am a star
Bill never met an unearned prize that he didn’t covet.
The right and left attacking him- no one deserves it more.
no baseball game for the cardinals last night…..I was a caller to kmox in st. louis, and I blasted Gates as hard as I could….emphasizing that I thought he and arne duncan were two of the worst mistakes of Obama….people who should never have had such access to the white house….I mentioned the millions of folllowers that Diane has, and what a very serious place it is to learn about Gates for several year, and the serious problems teachers have had with him. The host was every bit as livid as I was…..he has thought that Gates saw education as a place to train people for microsoft….I mentioned how quicklyGates’ wealth raced from 69 billion to 125 billion, and that I thought that was a lot of billions. Kmox has recently filled the 11-2 slot with local programming….an improvement over the continuation of material from the late Rush Limbaugh. A realistic assessment of what Bill Gates is and has been is something St.,Louis needs, particularly as it has affected public education.
Good to hear. Thanks for speaking up, especially since Rex Sinquefield negatively impacts public schools in St. Louis.
Rex Sinqufeld was raised in a Catholic orphanage. By his brains and hard work, he became a billionaire. He hates public schools and supports vouchers and charter.
4-26-2021, St. Louis public radio, reporter, Evie Hemphill’s interview with the author of “Libertarian Rex, How ‘the king’ of St. Louis was defeated-for now- and how you too can topple your local hometown billionaire.”
‘birds of a feather flock together’ – William Turner in the 16th century
Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein were not alone. The flock they belonged to was large, wealthy, powerful, and spread our around the world.
The image of Bill Gates as a genius philanthropist has always been false and has always been a problem. It is shattered because of his poor behavior. Rightly so. His opposition to lifting vaccine patents is noted as well. He is still dangerously selfish, but differently now. He cannot get away with using his teflon image to sway the public into believing he cares about them. He will have to make more of his money dark instead.
Yeah, Gates is a menace to society, but kicking him out of a board because of his private life is just, well, Victorian.
Sleeping with his employees is not the boss’s private life.
It’s called abusing one’s position.
Also something Bill Clinton did.
Must be something about Bills.
“It’s called abusing one’s position.”
How do you know that’s what happened? History and literature are full of the complexities of personal relationships but we pretend that we know what’s right or wrong without knowing knowing anything about the issue. In what sense is this more than gossiping? We are not exactly increasing our credibility with such discussions.
A better line would be to talk about replacing Microsoft products on most people’s computers which they use to post here, forcing MS would go out of business.
Private Affairs
The boss’s private life
Is bound to be unmasked
By boss’s public wife
Who wasn’t ever asked
The Bill
The bill is bound to come
When fooling with the staff
Melinda Gates ain’t dumb
Will have the final laugh
Kicked off the board
They kicked him off the board
For bed board indiscretions
For actions quite untoward
For out of place affections
Victoria’s Secret
Victoria kept a secret
About her long affair
Until she had to leak it
About the billionaire
With such great material, I could write these all day, but I have to power wash the patio.
Whose footprints these I think I know
Sunk into cowpats (his M.O.)
I’ll spend a few secs here to quash
His gall with verse; he earned his woe.
The poop is deep—much here to josh–
But I must home, enough of tosh.
For I have bagels there to nosh
And patio to power wash.
As another reader said, the boss should not have affairs with employees.
Many fairy tales go against this advisory, as well as its companion “employees should not have affairs with their bosses”.
But even in real life, both advisories prove to be as appropriate as using statistics to advise people whom to date, love, have children with.
I could (and probably would) tell my daughter “Hey, be careful about dating your boss”, but making judgement about such an affair, and draw conclusions about the participants’ character often turn out to be unwise and may have unpredictable consequences.
In many countries, people were baffled by how much the US was shaken by the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. We seem to believe, we can and should prescribe moral and family values for other people much more than other peoples.
Its actually not about morality.
I could not care less about Clinton’s or Gates’ “morality”.
It’s about power.
According to the NY Times report Gates was “coming on” to his female employees, which made for an “uncomfortable” (aka, toxic) work environment.
And the board — not I — decided that Gates’ relationship with the employee was inappropriate.
But i would have the same “issue” with a teacher who had a sexual relationship with a student in their class over whom they wielded power — for grades, for example.
There is law against that in every country.
K-12 teachers are fired over such “indiscretions”, by the way.
And not because they were immoral, but because they violated a position of trust.
“We need to continue to investigate how Bill Gates treats his female employees, but we also have to consider how Gates mistreats all of us, and erodes our democracy, by grabbing more power than he deserves.” — Tim Schwab, The Fall of the House of Gates?
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gates-me-too-divorce/
Well, whatever leads to Gates’ downfall I guess is fine.
Gates has had no downfall. He is still worth nearly $200 billion. He will continue to buy favorable media coverage. Perhaps he might be a little bit humble in projecting his image of a model billionaire of exemplary and exquisite character. Hey, none of us is without faults, but not many of us have the money or hubris to put ourselves forward as the best human being alive.
Well, Gates is now wounded and I bet there are thousands of journalists digging, trying to widen and deepen the wound and see if there is more to the story than just simple “he cheated on his wife”.
Are you suddenly interested in Bill Gates’ personal life or do you just prefer to publicly revel in your schadenfreude? So the two of you differ in your approaches to education reform…this is just so petty. All too in keeping with the present day tendency to villainize ones enemies. I think you both are failing to come to grips with the obvious inherent brokenness of our public education system, but that you both are well intentioned even if misguided. And I don’t care about the quality of your marriage Diane.
When someone like Bill Gates sets himself as a paragon of wisdom who tells everyone else in the world how to live their lives and acts as a know-it-all, he can expect scrutiny of his personal life. If this blog were the only place you read about Gates’ personal life, I would admit error. I don’t believe in prying into others’ family life. But when the story has been reported by every major media outlet in the country, I’m breaking no rules. I’m glad you are not interested in the quality of my marriage(s). Neither is anyone else.
So unproven speculation in the press gives you license to act as if you know it all? If the Gates’ having a civic point of view, donating money and being vocal about THEIR views subjects one of the couple to “open season” it’s a sick society and you are contributing to declining decency. If we only listened to unflawed messengers we could hear no one. Just read the poisonous posts on this blog cheering you on and ask your conscience whether you really wish to be a part of this nastiness.
The reports in the press are neither unproven nor are they speculation. Bill and Melinda are getting a divorce. Bill was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. The Microsoft board asked Bill to leave the board. If there is hostility to Bill on this site, it’s because educators and parents are disgusted by his arrogance and his treatment of their children as lab rats.
Poor poor Bill.
Everyone’s ganging up on him.
Even Melinda.
Prolly his kids too.
acranberg
“petty”. no.
When an authoritarian and libertarian plutocrat strips tax dollars from the public by sheltering income, intrudes on decisions about tax dollars spent in places where he pays no taxes, when his villainthropy gets him the medal of freedom award from an indebted politician, when he opposes patent waivers for vaccines, when he has no compassion for students then, he becomes fair game for all scrutiny. The prior listing excludes Bill’s unholy connection to Epstein, an exploiter of the vulnerable.
Diane would have to become evil and act on that evil for 40 years to be the subject of equivalency to Bill Gates.
Acranberg probably meant the meetings at Epstein’s residence were “petty”.
acranberg has the distorted mindset of a royalist- the richest 0.1% are mythically special.
Acranberg has the mindset of Bill Gates.
Maybe because he IS Bill Gates?
Louis Freeh is in the news today relative to his firm’s hiring of Rudy Giuliani. The Wikipedia entry about Freeh does not inspire confidence in Republican networks of influence operating out of D.C.
Opus Dei is mentioned.