Leon Wieseltier lands some heavy blows on the media-promoted philanthropy of the era, including Bill Clinton and his “global initiative”:

“Will the rich save the world? This has not been their traditional service to humankind; but in contemporary America you may be forgiven for believing in the messianic power of personal wealth. We are still enjoying the economicist fantasy that was inaugurated by technology in the Clinton years and consolidated by ideology in the Bush years. Could it be that the rich did not previously save the world because they were not rich enough? But they are rich enough now, right? I do not mean to be too clever. Bill Gates’s transformation of the greatest fortune in history into the greatest philanthropy in history will earn him a pride of place not only in the annals of American technology but also in the annals of American morality. No, it is the Clinton Global Initiative that makes me weary of the veneration of plutocrats. I have been reading the transcripts of the event. They are peculiarly repellent, the nobility of their purpose notwithstanding.
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The CGI was not only McKinsey moralized, it was also Hilton Head globalized. The former president warmly remembered that when he had trouble finding enough progressive lightbulbs for his house, he called the CEO of General Electric. The Clintons prefer the company of winners, even if they assemble the winners to talk about the losers. And to the old exclusiveness of these egalitarians there was added a new piousness, the snobbery of the saints. The best people turn out to be the best people. The Clintons have never recognized any difference between good people and people who help them. Even Rupert Murdoch is now a good man.”