I don't remember it quite that way. MS themselves were describing the choice of C# or VB as a "lifestyle choice." It was a while before everyone realized they did not in fact have equivalent functionality.

>That was put in for two primary reasons. 1) To provide language parity between VB and C#. VB.NET has had that capability since .NET 1.0. 2) To make it easier to work with Office, which was a huge PITA prior to C# 4.0.
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>When MS originally came out with .NET they saw C# and VB developers as fundamentally different, each doing different types of applications. Each language had its own team, directions, plans, etc. Reality set in and MS found that they really isn't any difference in the apps developed by C# and VB devs. The teams were merged and they declared language feature parity going forward.
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>>COM may not be as dead as I thought it was. A recent (current?) article in MSDN Magazine by Dino Esposito explores the new dynamic typing features in .NET 4.0. One of the uses is to communicate with COM objects in a simpler way. With ReSharper, you even get Intellisense.