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Broken Windows
Well, this is a bit of a surprise…Bill and Melinda Gates announce divorce after 27 years of marriage. In case that’s behind the paywall, here’s another report: Bill and Melinda Gates Divorce. I must say, I find their stated reason, that (emphasis added):
After a great deal of thought and a lot of work, we have made the decision to end our marriage. Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.
We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue to work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.
…rather selfish.
You don’t believe you can….? You’re two of the richest, and supposedly smartest, people in the world. So figure out how to, why don’t ‘cha? And then make it work.
Crimenutely.
It ain’t, as they say, rocket science. (That’s Elon Musk’s department). Jeff Bezos has already cornered the “act like a horny frat boy” angle. So perhaps this is all they could come up with.
I don’t want to go all movie review on you, but this so reminds me of why I disliked LaLaLand so much.
Published in General
Me too.
The big difference here is that Bezos and wife started Amazon together, neither was rich when they married. Bill Gates, however, was a major player in the computer world when he married Melinda. Plus, his father is one of the power-house lawyers in Seattle. You can bet he has a prenup.
It’s astonishing (frightening) we’re willing to give so much trust and credence to people saying anything as vapid, cryptic and cold as “We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
Reminds me: my friend went to his grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. He asked his grandfather “Whats your secret to being married so long?”. Response: “Well, I didnt die and I didn’t leave”. Simple but profound; much more profound that the above pile of drivel.
According to the NY Post, there is no pre-nup.
Well they both have pretty crazy ideas of what to do with a lot of money, so maybe we should hope that the lawyers get a lot of it.
That’s extremely surprising.
Could this be part of a tax scheme? If they’re divorced, can they EACH leave $X to their children tax-free, or something? Or maybe to other (insane) “causes” that they support?
WA has its own estate tax! It’s almost a given that it’s one reason they started the Foundation, to shield the estate from taxes, both local and federal. WA is a community property state, so anything accumulated after marriage is split.
They’ve always said that they were going to leave each of their children “just” (LOL) $10M, so perhaps not.
There is that. I was, frankly, hoping that Bill’s solar geoengineering scheme would suck up such a lot of money that there wouldn’t be much left over for their other Lefty causes, but perhaps the net result here is that there’ll be less money for that project, too.
I’d think more of both of them if they’d just quietly announced that they planned to split, and if they’d simply left out all the new-age codswallop the world doesn’t need to know, about not being able to “grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives,” and the obligatory ask for “privacy as we begin to navigate this new life.”
Earth to Bill and Melinda, starting Tuesday Morning: Meet the new life. Same as the old life.
The statement is so woke it could have been written jointly by the Gateses, Harry, Meghan, and The Oprah. I expect the reality, despite the hundreds of billions, is much more pedestrian, and perhaps even a little sordid. It usually is.
Well, hopefully not as sordid as Danny Thomas…
At least for our sake, if not the children’s…
That is to say, Bill and Melinda mostly want there to be fewer darker skinned people.
Probably written by a publicist, I’d bet it has nothing to do with the real reasons.
I think it’s more likely that she got tired of him for boring and ordinary reasons, looked at the clock and the calendar, and hit the silk. “Irreconcilable differences” are rarely disputations over economic worldview, and more likely the accumulated inability to even imagine listening to that toenail clipper at work, even if it’s on the other side of a 40-room house.
I was going say something like that…your adult children are devastated by divorce almost more than the young ones because then their whole childhood seems like a fraud! It’s not any easier for the big “kids” than the little kids.
Why? A couple of rich-piggy narcissists splitting has no effect on my life. It shouldn’t on yours.
Yes! I was just having this discussion with my daughter the other day (we had just listened to City of Stars – we can critique the music another day).
I just think it’s the perfect movie for the times. And not in a good way.
And then all of the prodigy he get to be paid fat salaries out of it to do nothing the rest of their lives.
The Kennedys have generation skipping trusts whatever the hell that is but it supposedly saves massively on taxes.
The income tax and the federal reserve were the two worst things that ever happened to this country.
It’s really weird the first time you see the house from across the lake. It doesn’t look like that big of a deal until you realize that they tore down six other mansions to build it. You have to tell yourself that to get the right perspective.
Well, yes.
Or perhaps it’s Bill’s revenge, at long last, for Microsoft Bob.
Yes, that’s true. It looks (relatively speaking, of course) fairly modest when you first view it from the lake.
I am not a fan of Gates (ever since experiencing the “Blue Screen of Death”) but am sad to see him and his wife getting a divorce.
It’s an oligopolistic scam. Amazon is a creature of the financial-ization of the country, and personally I don’t think it nets out. Apple is only a little bit better. Berkshire Hathaway. etc. Everything is a racket.
I doubt that Bill used to talk or write that way when he was starting & running Microsoft, and Melinda probably didn’t, either. Probably a pattern of speaking (and thinking?) absorbed from the kind of people who tended to be involved in some of their nonprofit work.
To quote Rhett Butler: “Frankly, my dear, I couldn’t give a damn!”
Perhaps my view of Bill Gates is colored by the fact that I’ve actually met the man, and had a conversation with him.
I realize a single conversation with someone doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, even if the conversation is about Important Things ™, but it tells you more than can be gleaned from looking at the news.
He is the most dangerous of liberal democrats: he is smart, and he’s got a lot of money, which means he’s got a lot of influence. But he isn’t evil. My opinion is he’s actually tried to do some good with his knowledge and money, even if he’s gone about doing good the wrong way, in my opinion. Of course I wish he were a Christian conservative.
His divorce is unfortunate, but not surprising. He doesn’t seem to view marriage the same way that I do.
Maybe if we all spent as much time being concerned about our neighbor’s divorce as are about Bill and Melinda’s, the world would be a better place. (He said from his high horse)
I wonder why the felt the need to post a public explanation of why they are getting divorced.
I haven’t met him, but a friend who was a very successful startup CEO…a guy with extraordinary social skills and perceptiveness…attended a dinner event with him. His remark was “treated everybody with a lot of respect–waiters and busboys and all. Except the media–wasn’t so nice to them.”
There was no prenup according London Times. And she is the one who filed for divorce.