Wall Street Journal: Bill Gates Speech at Harvard

CRITICISM: I can smell the prestige in the room through my computer screen and it smells smug, like billion dollar farts. I once saw a video of Bill Gates visiting congress where he went specifically to influence legislation on extending the length of time on his employee visas. He was treated like a Rock star all of the officials were doe eyed in his presence. The scene is very similar here, and who can blame them? Both this guy and Steve Jobs both dropped out of their colleges to become iconic unreal successes, only to venture back and speak at graduations for their symbolic honorary degrees. The irony of the whole thing is the elephant in the room and is obviously not lost on Gates as he pokes fun at it himself, joking that with the path he chose if he were invited to speak at the Harvard orientation their would be far less graduates present at the ceremony. Gates does take after the Steve Jobs Stanford speech and at least imply that perhaps he dropped out because he was too busy sneaking into other Harvard courses outside his curriculum. However true this may be, I guess I would say it too if I were offered an honorary degree from the school I ditched for monumental super-villain-esque success.