Is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook still planning to run for president in 2020?
No, I didn’t think so. But what a difference a year or so makes. Remember his “listening tour” to Iowa? Reminded me of the old saying about the boss’ office – the door is open, but the mind is closed. Zuckerberg even hired a pollster, because, you know, he was just what the country was looking for.
A 67-inch high computer nerd from Harvard by way of the New York suburbs.
He was being “urged” to run – just ask him, or his spokesman, because you certainly aren’t going to get through his well-armed security detail, you deplorable peon you.
Until a few days ago, Zuckerberg was one of the Beautiful People. He opposed “the wall,” because, you know, he’s got enough do-re-mi to build his own walls to keep the alien hordes at bay. It’s the same attitude that the Pope, House Speaker Paul Ryan and New York Mayor Bill deBlasio share about walls.
Good walls make good neighbors – for them, but not for you.
Now, however, the chattering classes have turned on Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s fifth-richest person, according to the latest Forbes magazine list, with a net worth of $71 billion. This week Zuckerberg is taking an even worse pounding than the numbers six and seven, the evil Koch brothers, who are worth a paltry $60 billion apiece.
Personally, I never got the whole Facebook thing. I have an account, or page, or whatever it is, for my radio show, but that’s strictly business. When I initially heard about Facebook, somebody told me that I could use it to catch up with my high school classmates.
My first thought was, why the hell would I want to catch up with my high school classmates?
I never moved away. My radio show is carried on the stations I listened to as a kid. If any of my classmates need to speak to me, they can call in to my show. I have a toll-free number. I don’t need Mark Zuckerberg.
I use Google, I rely on Amazon, I goof around on Twitter, I listen to music and watch old movies on Youtube. But Facebook? Forget about it!
There’s a saying in Silicon Valley: If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Here’s another thought: before all of you Facebook users post your next anti-Trump screed and defriend that neighbor of yours that you busted wearing a MAGA hat, maybe you should read the “Terms & Services” that you agreed to by checking the box when you signed up for the “free” service.
You know, when you buy or sell a house, the real-estate lawyers make you initial every page of the p&s, as if you’ve actually read the fine print about lead paint, balloon payments, easements etc. So don’t tell me that all the members of the “reality-based” community didn’t know that they were being harvested, like so many farm-raised catfish.
Isn’t it amazing that in 2012 when Obama’s reelection campaign was “scraping” data, he was hailed as a genius? But when the way-overrated Cambridge Analytica did exactly the same thing in 2016, it suddenly became an “Orwellian” scandal. Because, of course, they were doing it for Donald J. Trump.
Speaking of Trump, I don’t think he’s serious about trust-busting these Politically Correct totalitarians in Silicon Valley. I wish he were. These billionaires have a lot more power, and they use it more darkly, than the early generation of monopoly capitalists – the John D. Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegies and Buck Dukes.
Not to mention they have a lot more money than the old philanthropists who endowed universities and free libraries around the nation. To return to that Forbes list, Jeff Bezos of Amazon is worth (or was, before the recent presidential tweetstorm) $112 billion, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google are worth just under $50 billion each.
But the moonbats remain obsessed with, say, Rupert Murdoch, whose net worth is a paltry $15 billion (he’s number 94 on the list), which is still five times what Forbes estimates is the net worth of the Great Satan himself, President Trump, number 766 with $3.1 billion.
Whatever happened to money talks, BS walks? If money is the root of all evil, which these Bernie Sanders supporters must certainly believe, then these Internet enforcers of PC orthodoxy must truly be the real malefactors of great wealth, right?
I’m trying to be angry about Facebook’s alleged betrayal, but really, who couldn’t see this coming? I’d defriend Mark Zuckerberg, but I never friended him in the first place. I have an ironclad policy – never “friend” anyone from Harvard, even if he did drop out.