"Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates met at work. He was technically her boss. He ran Microsoft..."

"... and she began working there in 1987 as a product manager the year after she graduated from college. Throughout their relationship, the two have played up the cute aspects of their office romance. He flirted with her when they sat together at a conference, then asked her out when they ran into each other in a company parking lot, according to Ms. French Gates, who described their relationship’s beginnings during a public appearance in 2016. Long after they married in 1994, Mr. Gates would on occasion pursue women in the office.... Six current and former employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the firm that manages the Gates’s fortune said those incidents, and others more recently, at times created an uncomfortable workplace environment. Mr. Gates was known for making clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office.... Some of the employees said... he did not pressure the women to submit to his advances for the sake of their careers, and he seemed to feel that he was giving the women the space to refuse his advances. Even so, Mr. Gates’s actions ran counter to the agenda of female empowerment that Ms. French Gates was promoting on a global stage. On Oct. 2, 2019, for example, she said she would spend $1 billion promoting 'women’s power and influence in the United States.'"

From "Long Before Divorce, Bill Gates Had Reputation for Questionable Behavior/Melinda French Gates voiced concerns about her husband’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and a harassment claim against his money manager. He also had an affair with an employee" (NYT).

Imagine spending a billion dollars to promote a message — to bullshit the masses — while you are blithely violating that message within your personal business realm, where people are trying to make their own little living. What royal hypocrisy! 

I don't know the facts first hand, and maybe none of these allegations against Bill Gates are true, but it seems that Melinda Gates — Ms. French Gates — is wisely choosing to disengage her reputation from his. She wants a feminist message? She's got to lop him off.

AND: It's so interesting, these marriages that begin in a workplace setting. Do they not originate in interactions like the interactions that become the evidentiary basis for claims that there is a discriminatory hostile workplace? But the success of the relationship makes all the difference. This one interaction grew into a marriage. I think of all the professors who are married to former students. That seems so nice for the lovely couple — we participate in the playing up of the cute aspects — but what's in the larger picture? Was it just that one magic student who was perceived as wifely material? We gamely presume so, we with our enjoyment of cute aspects.

MacKenzie Scott — the unfathomably rich ex-wife of Jeff Bezos — has married again. The new husband is a high school science teacher .

WaPo reports. 

The news of the marriage came out after he signed onto her "giving page," pledging to give away most of his money in his lifetime.  

He writes: 

It is strange to be writing a letter indicating I plan to give away the majority of my wealth during my lifetime, as I have never sought to gather the kind of wealth required to feel like saying such a thing would have particular meaning. I have been a teacher for the majority of my life... And now... I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know—and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others.... I have been lucky to find my closest friends in people very unlike me in distinct ways: religion, sexual orientation, race, gender identity, socioeconomic background, you name it. Kindness and a willingness to find commonality despite differences has brought me together with them and changed me for the better....

Who would you marry if you were a woman who not only had absolutely no use for extra money but only for a partner — companion — to help or stand by while you give your massive money away? 

At WaPo, which is owned by MacKenzie Scott's ex-husband, the article has this in the comments:

MacKenzie Scott married a teacher. Just when I didn't think your star could rise any higher.... Please, both of you, show us how it's done. And, I say this with heartfelt gratitude: thank you for your service-minded contributions. (Bezos? You, not so much.) 

Somebody else steps on the sentimentality:

Uh, don't get too excited. Lakeside is the most expensive private school in the Seattle area ... its campus looks like an elite university. The students are some of the most wealthy and privileged kids in the nation. So, I mean -- yeah, great, he's a teacher, but let's not pretend that he's toiling away in the public schools with low-income black kids.