Big Tech uses ‘socially awkward’ and ‘the spectrum’ to cover their sins

So much for the Good Tech Overlord.

One detail about Bill Gates has always stuck with me, and I was forever astounded that, over his 20-year makeover, it was never again mentioned: Upon his engagement to Melinda French, he insisted that if they were to marry, he would need one long weekend alone each year with his ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad.

Not only that — Gates asked Winblad for permission to marry, then told Time magazine all about it.

“I called Ann and asked for her approval,” Gates told Walter Isaacson in 1997. Gates characterized these annual rendezvous as sexless nerd stuff, and who wouldn’t believe him? Just look at that eyewear and the penchant for synthetic knits.

“We can play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology,” Gates said. The implication, of course, is that Melinda was bright, just not as bright as Ann. Isaacson noted that of the few framed photos in Gates’s office, one was of his wife and another of Ann.

It’s understandable America fell for the well-crafted image of Bill Gates, the cuddly nerd in a V-neck and khakis, BFFs with Warren Buffett, most interested in climate change, global health initiatives, education, and, like Oprah, loving nothing more than recommending a good book.

Bill Gates posited himself as the opposite of our tech villains: Mark Zuckerberg, unconcerned by fake news or rioting at the Capitol or the propaganda ISIS and Russia feed through Facebook; Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon recently admitted lying about overworked employees forced to pee in bottles; and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX is bullying residents of the small Texas town Musk would like to buy.

Of course we wanted to believe Bill Gates was good, despite what seems an obvious truth: Anyone with the kind of megalomania needed to create profit margins and personal fortunes greater than the GDPs of many nations, whose companies more closely resemble sovereign countries, each founder its imperial ruler for life and answerable, really, to no other government on the planet — why would any of these people have a moral compass?

The seeming lack of morality or empathy has traditionally been explained away as a politically incorrect third rail: These men might be on the spectrum, a bit autistic; we’ve been told.

It’s a defense that’s always somehow in the ether, as is the excuse that these men are such geniuses that their greed, ruthlessness and meanness is something closer to eccentricity.

And the coup de grace of this argument: Ladies, just look at them! Not a leading man in the bunch. Don’t you feel sorry for these guys? It’s us women, after all, who have made their ability to deal with us so hard, what with our superficiality and high-school dismissal of the nerds.

So how could it be Bill Gates’s fault if he came off a little creepy? Shouldn’t he get credit — and this is surely his crisis team at work — for telling at least one woman that if he didn’t like his come-on to her — he the married boss, she the subordinate, #MeToo, #Shmee-Too — just to pretend it never happened? Isn’t that the height of courtly benevolence?

Before we get into the sordid details of the real Bill Gates, it’s worth noting that as far back as 1997, when he was 41, longtime friends and former colleagues told Time who he was: A boss with a “famous temper,” loathed in the tech world.

“He’s Darwinian,” former Microsoft exec Rob Glaser told Isaacson. “He doesn’t look for win-win situations with others, but for ways to make others lose.”

Esther Dyson, who nonetheless called herself a longtime friend, issued this observation: “He can lack human empathy.”

Bill Gates: On the spectrum? Or sociopath?

As one former employee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently told The Daily Beast, “It was not a secret . . . that he had dalliances. I don’t think it was a wink-wink permissive thing at all. I think [Melinda] was humiliated and did not like it.”

Translation: Bill either enjoyed or didn’t care that he was embarrassing his wife, who has always been seen as his greatest asset.

As the old saw goes, the fish rots from the head.

“The personality of Bill Gates,” one of his closest colleagues told Time, “determines the culture of Microsoft.”

In 2020, Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board — allegedly at the insistence of board members who, according to the Wall Street Journal, were investigating a multi-year extramarital affair Gates had with a Microsoft employee.

“This was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably,” his spokeswoman told the Journal. Yes, because don’t all such affairs usually end peaceably? Further, she said, his “decision to transition off the board” — have to love that soft verbiage — “was in no way related to this matter.”

Right. Because there is no shortage of powerful men who, their camps have maintained, are way, way too smart to be sexually inappropriate, let alone harass or worse: Gov. Andrew Cuomo comes to mind, as does Les Moonves, Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Al Franken, Matt Lauer, former New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, New Republic editor Leon Weiselteir, to name a few.

I think we can retire intelligence as a plausible defense.

According to a discrimination lawsuit filed against Microsoft in 2015, “the flagrant and repeated incidents of sexual misconduct toward women at Microsoft reflects the corporate culture in which women are undervalued and underpaid.”

The suit, dismissed at the end of last year, also contains allegations that the company is a place where women are “ignored, abused or degraded,” where staffers were called “p—y” and “c—t,” and that female employees lodged 238 complaints with HR, 108 about sexual harassment and 118 gender discrimination.

One employee claimed that a male colleague asked why she was “dressed like a whore.” Another complaint, about a male staffer who allegedly groped four women at a single work event, was dismissed by the company, which said he suffered from “poor interpersonal awareness,” according to the suit.

Sound familiar?

“It was a culture of [treating] women poorly with impunity,” plaintiff Katherine Moussouris told the Daily Mail, “and I think these revelations [about Gates] have shown that to the world.”

Gates reportedly pursued several female employees over the years while married.

Even now, there are plenty who would minimize Gates’s behavior, calling it creepy but not criminal. That doesn’t make it right.

Enter Jeffrey Epstein.

Gates befriended Epstein in 2011, three years after the financier pleaded guilty to — talk about soft verbiage — “soliciting prostitution from a minor.” (As if it’s partly the minor’s fault.)

Gates visited Epstein at his $77 million New York City townhouse dozens of times, flew on Epstein’s private plane and allegedly sought Esptein’s advice on how to end his marriage.

If there’s one thing we learned from the FBI’s raid on Epstein’s townhouse, it’s that the art and sculpture on display strongly hinted at Epstein’s predilections.

While Gates’s spokeswoman has summarily dismissed any close relationship between the two men as “inaccurate” and “false,” Gates was apparently so impressed with Epstein that he wrote an e-mail to colleagues after their first meeting in 2011.

“His lifestyle is very different and intriguing although it would not work for me,” Gates wrote, according to The New York Times. He then told of an unexpected development.

“A very attractive woman and her daughter” — who was 15 years old — “dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late,” Gates wrote.

We’re supposed to believe Gates had no idea anything was amiss here? He is a genius, is he not?

As to the most recent explanation for this unholy alliance — Gates needed Epstein’s connections to win the Nobel Prize, which he covets and which will never happen now — again, one must ask: Couldn’t such a smart man find another way?

Gates allegedly kept his continued friendship with Epstein from Melinda, and this is reportedly a major reason she has filed for divorce, seeking counsel as far back as 2019.

It’s been less than three weeks since the divorce announcement. In that time, the world went from collective shock and surprise to believing that these multiple accusations, against both Microsoft and one of the world’s largest philanthropists, sound credible and should be treated as such. That’s real progress.