Bill Gates has cast in his lot with the FBI in their spat with Apple with regard to opening a back door to an iPhone for the Department of Justice, according to ReCode. This is not surprising as we’ve seen the king of marketing cavort at Davos with the stuff that rises to the neck of the old milk bottle. Not a crowd I would choose, but they certainly wouldn’t choose me, so the feeling is mutual. Gates is also a big fan on GMO products and Monsanto, it would seem, so this is a minor black mark in the book I don’t keep on Bill.

He reminds me of a class of people like Wayne Gretzky who was happy enough to have the protection of the NHLPA as a player; he might have been against them all along, but he sure benefited from the groundwork they laid that allowed him to blossom as a player and a financial entity. The move to LA seemed to coincide with the adoption of the polo pony lifestyle and the attitude of floating above the vicissitudes that trouble the little folk. All just a personal reflection on what I’ve seen of Wayne since 1988, and I have to admit that he hasn’t occupied a great deal of intellectual, spiritual or emotional space in my own little world. He fits in well with other champions of the underclasses like Bono, Sepp Blatter, and any number of athletes who have drawn deeply from the chalice of public support in their quest to carve out a little niche in the pantheon of prolific pulchritude (see? Rex Murphy is paddling like hell to squeeze in!).

Much is made of Mr. Gates, mostly because he has so much money, the Foundation not withstanding, given how the funds seem to get doled out, to whom, and with what strings attached. This is a man who made a fortune of selling bugs as features, who has managed to make the blue screen of death into a daily phenomenon and who, along with Apple and a legion of lesser players, has turned a large segment of the populace into techno-zombies who are readying themselves to surrender their ability to drive, to communicate face-to-face, to distinguish data from wisdom and a host of other functions that link us to our historical selves, as well as any constructive evolutionary future selves. He’s the perfect P.T.Barnum stand-in and has managed to cash in big-time as the one-born-every-minute has accelerated into billions and billions served.

This phenomenon of rising to blend in with the forces of the most destructive reminds me of a song that I first heard on a Bonnie Raitt album in, I believe, 1974:

And I did follow it back to its N’awlins roots (RIP AT):