Privilege implies exclusion from privilege.
— Robert Anton Wilson
Call me a libtard: I don't care much for unbridled privilege.
My closest encounter with it came in the National Gallery of Art on on a March evening in 1998, when I spotted a frantic Bill Gates.
It was Sunday, around 7 pm, and the building was officially closed to the art-viewing public. All the galleries were dark and cordoned off.
I was standing with a friend in the hallway in a long line for an after-hours chamber recital when Gates and his wife walked up alongside us.
They paused at the door of one of the galleries and Gates said, "That's it," pointing at a huge Winslow Homer seascape inside the darkened room. Without thought, he unhitched the velvet rope that blocked the door and shooed his wife in.
A young Black security guard appeared suddenly and said, "Sir, sir, the gallery's closed." "We just want to look at the painting," Gates snapped and stepped into the gallery. The guard repeated his warning to no avail, shrugged his shoulders, and wandered off for reinforcements. Gates and his wife spent five minutes inside the room examining the Homer, then left. The reinforcements never arrived.
The following morning, Gates' DC visit made the headlines of The Washington Post. He was in town to testify on Capitol Hill about Microsoft's monopoly over Internet access.
Two months later, Gates made the headlines again, this time for buying a Winslow Homer seascape for $36 million—in 1998, the greatest price ever paid for an American artist's painting.
Lost on the Grand Banks, the last major Homer seascape in private hands, was believed at the time to be destined for the National Gallery's permanent collection. But Gates got his hands on it first. (He still owns it today.)
I realized why he'd been so keen to examine Homer's seascape in the National Gallery that Sunday evening in March.
He was planning to buy one of his own.
The thing that galled me (and still does) wasn't Gates' ability to buy a $36 million Winslow Homer, but the notion that he was entitled to let himself into an art gallery—the National Art Gallery—after hours, as if it were his living room.
But, to his mind, it is. After all, he's a man of privilege.
Privilege entered English in the 12th century, derived from the Latin privilegium.
According to the Laws of the Twelve Tables—the source of Ancient Roman law—a privilegium was a right conferred by the emperor on one man, a "law for an individual."
The Romans called the privilegium precisely for what it was: favoritism.
You know, like Bill Gates.
Gates grew up in a privileged household, so his sense of entitlement was strong to begin with. But his runaway success in business no doubt supersized it.
Business success often goes to people's heads, you've probably noticed. Successful business leaders frequently feel they're superior—distinguished from others in their ability and willingness to do endless battle against chill winds and harsh seas. They, the lonely sailors, have singlehandedly brought the boats home. Everyone else is just ballast.
And so we like to say, "It's lonely at the top." One art critic, in fact, has suggested that Bill Gates had to acquire Lost on the Grand Banks because he feels so alone.
"In his bunkered isolation from the rest of us," the critic writes, "the image of the solo sailor is paramount."
Above: Lost on the Grand Banks by Winslow Homer. 1885. Oil on canvas. 32 x 50 inches. Collection of Bill Gates.
