Heather M. Kendrick ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
: OK, OK.  It's bad enough that Newsweek felt the urge to stick Bill
: Gates on the cover this week, causing me an unpleasant surprise when
: I went to the mailbox.  It's bad enough that the man has a squillion
: dollars (rough estimate) and, shall we say, a rather significant
: influence on the industry.
 
: Does he have to smirk all the time, too?!
 
: Seriously!  Every time I see a picture of the man, he's smirking.
: Almost leering.  It makes me feel so dirty!  Ugh!
 
There are a few theories on why Bill G. tends to smirk on a constant
basis.
 
1) He makes more money in, say, one day, than you, or me, or anyone either
you or I know, or ever will know will ever make their entire lives ever,
and so he's all smug about it.  It's the self-satisfied smug grin of the
kind of guy who was beat up on the playgrounds as a little kid and who now
has enough money to buy, say, Los Angeles and still have enough money left
over for anything else, so he's revelling in it all.
 
2) He is incapable of smiling, and so for every staged photo op he has
small hooks inserted in the sides of his mouth with fishing wire to tug
upwards -- this isn't so much a smile, or a smirk, as a grimace of a man
in intense pain.
 
3) He is an alien, and the lifelike human rubber face mask he wears only
has one expression.
 
-- adr