This belies the reality that criticism of Gates has been growing since before the start of the pandemic – although his emergence as the de facto global vaccine czar sparked conspiracy theories, Gates’ media manipulation machine successfully shifted the narrative to paint all his critics as unhinged conspiracy theorists, drowning out criticisms of\u00a0Gates’ success in undermining the “open vaccine” movement,<\/a>\u00a0something that has been revitalized by President Biden’s decision to back a proposal at the WTO to waive IP protections for COVID vaccines.<\/p>\n In the span of about two weeks,\u00a0the public goodwill that Gates long enjoyed has mostly evaporated.\u00a0<\/strong>But as\u00a0Bloomberg reminds us<\/a>\u00a0in a lengthy feature about Gates’ sudden loss of public support, Gates wasn’t always so revered. In the early days, before he the propaganda machine, Gates was seen as a “ruthless nerd-turned-tycoon”.<\/p>\n In fact, as Bloomberg tells it, Gates’ initial interest in philanthropy was part of an attempt to white wash his image after some pretty aggressive behavior in the 1980s, including stabbing his co-founder in the back while he was undergoing cancer treatment.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to forget that Bill Gates wasn\u2019t always so publicly revered.\u00a0During the heyday of the PC revolution, he was the ruthless nerd-turned-tycoon who brutally and profanely berated underlings and allegedly tried to slash Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen\u2019s equity in the company while he was undergoing cancer treatment in the early 1980s.<\/strong>\u00a0(Gates has said his recollection of events differed from Allen\u2019s.)\u00a0Windows software, his flagship creation, was a buggy mess that frustrated millions of consumers, and Steve Jobs groused that Gates and his team showed \u201cno shame\u201d and \u201cno taste\u201d in ripping off Apple\u2019s products. Even the judge who oversaw Microsoft\u2019s crippling\u00a0turn-of-the-century monopoly trial said Gates had \u201ca Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success.”<\/strong><\/p>\n By the 2000s, though, the world\u2019s richest man seemed to have\u00a0realized he had to change this Redmond-robber-baron narrative\u2014and that his wealth could help. He stepped down as Microsoft\u2019s CEO and\u00a0shifted his attention to what would become the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,\u00a0which eventually gave away more than $50 billion to\u00a0fight malaria and AIDS and boost childhood vaccination rates, earning the couple widespread praise, not to mention\u00a0Time\u2019s\u00a02005 \u201cPersons of the Year\u201d cover with U2\u2019s Bono.<\/strong>\u00a0Less than a decade after Microsoft\u2019s antitrust trial, Gates was making the rounds on Capitol Hill advising lawmakers on U.S. technology competitiveness and health initiatives.<\/p>\n “I was lucky enough in my Microsoft work to accumulate an ownership that was worth a lot of money,”\u00a0<\/strong>he told Charlie Rose in 2008, shortly after switching to full-time focus on his giving pledges.\u00a0“Warren [Buffett] likes to call that ‘claim checks’ on society, where you get to say, you know, have a thousand people go build a pyramid for you or do whatever you want.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pretty soon, Gates image morphed from “technocrat” to “savior”. Before long, the media was gobbling up his seasonal reading lists, and President Barack Obama was awarding him the presidential medal of freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.<\/p>\n Surely, these massive philanthropic claim checks have immensely aided vulnerable populations. They\u2019ve also proved astonishingly effective in rehabbing his image from tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior. Good deeds bought good will. His and Melinda\u2019s annual foundation letters grew more popular than Microsoft product launches (albeit a low bar). Media scrutiny mostly vanished, replaced by perpetual guest-editor spots at major publications lusting after Bill\u2019s world-changing ideas. His 2015 TED Talk racked up tens of millions of views, his occasional book recommendations were greeted like Oprah endorsements, and it wasn\u2019t too long before Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n This was more than superficial fame. Gates\u2019s civic clout could sway the discourse on critical and controversial issues (only recently he lobbied to keep Covid-19 vaccine patent protections in place), an influence that\u2019s threatened as more lurid details surface from his current divorce proceedings. That\u2019s not to suggest NGOs and nonprofits will stop taking his money.<\/strong>\u00a0But, as skeptics have noted, if he\u2019s sought inappropriate relationships with female employees, the foundation that bears his name is probably no longer the ideal advocate for women\u2019s empowerment. If he became too close years ago with Jeffrey Epstein, even after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor, Gates is clearly not the right leader to campaign against sex trafficking. It\u2019s not so much that he\u2019s at risk of being \u201ccancelled\u201d altogether as he is from being Ctrl-Alt-Deleted from his perch atop the moral high ground.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But nothing can protect a billionaire’s reputation from association with Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile financier, along with #MeToo-inspired reports about “mistreatment” of female Microsoft employees with who he may have been romantically involved. The controversy is spoiling Gates’ plans to follow up his COVID-era achievements by doubling-down on his focus on climate change. He has just published a new book, and has been working with other ‘global leaders’ to invest in green tech.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/gates1.jpg?itok=6wmfYUD5\")
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