“Garbage People” — Or How We Ended Up In This Mess

“Everybody’s gotta dump on somebody” — Tony Manaro (John Travolta) Saturday Night Fever, 1977.

Bill McGlashan. I had never heard of the guy until I read about him on Vanity Fair’s website earlier this week. He is one of the fat-cat, thinks-the-rules-don’t-apply-to-him, hedge-fund, super-rich guys who got nabbed in the still evolving college admissions scandal.

Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin may be known names, but McGlashan is connected. As in U2’s frontman Bono and his The Rise Fund, a $2 billion portfolio designed to impact change in the developing world. He was also paying off University of Southern California senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel and the mastermind of the scheme, William Singer, to get his son into college.

Up until the scandal broke and he was charged, McGlashan was a senior partner at TPG Growth, after spending time at Bain Capitol. (Hello, Willard) He spoke at Devos, TED Talks, was set for life, so why did he screw it up? Here was a wealthy man who has a kid who he wanted to go to college, specifically USC.

See, this is where these wealthy people lose me. They claim they want to help, but all they really want is attention. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Bernie Madoff and down the line, they’re playing on a different level, a ‘game’ that mere mortals hardly understand, let alone want to.

McGlashan and his $2 billion Rise Fund has done some good, but mostly, as the VF piece…