No Matter What Zerlina Maxwell of the Washington Post Says, Men Have Rights Too

Zerlina's Finest Hour as She Stands Up for Morality

In a post regarding the now debunked UVA gang rape claim on the part of the mysterious "Jackie," Zerlina Maxell of the Washington Post, makes the statement:

We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation. This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in courts; it’s a moral one...

I find the above shocking. What happened to rights of the accused? Due process? Why does the United States bother to insist on such civilized behavior. Well, people like Zerlina Maxwell are the answer. If she had her way ... OMG! It's shocking to me that the Post allows this kind of rights-trampling diatribe disguised as intelligent commentary. But she's popular, an attorney, an ardent feminist. And make no mistake. The arrow points in one direction, people, from the tip of Zerlina's finger to every man in this country: YOU ARE GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT. UVA, and everyone else, should be MORALLY OBLIGATED TO DENY RIGHTS TO THE ACCUSED IF THE ACCUSER IS A WOMAN.

Zerlina appears to be creating her own form of feminist hip-shooting morality, a kangaroo court of her own legal reality wherein any female accuser must be believed or the "costs" will be high. In her article, she argues that regardless of circumstances, female accusers must always be believed from the onset no matter how wrong-headed or outrageous their claims, and let's face it, the Jackie UVA rape claim was outrageous by anyone's standard. As of the date of this posting, lives and organizations and a proud school have been smeared by the media, and Zerlina is perfectly at peace with that? It doesn't matter to her whether or not the media makes a lynching circus out of UVA or anyone else in the near future? It doesn't matter to Zerlina how her philosophical take on smearing and lies will encourage more smearing and lies? After all, if you just point the finger and open your mouth to do as much damage as you can, you MUST be believed in Zerlina's world because "wrongly disbelieving a survivor" (a woman) outweigh the costs of wrongly bludgeoning men and institutions and anyone else who might seek to question an accuser's validity at any particular time.

Zerlina Maxwell should have lived in the Salem witch trial era. She would have loved it. Everyone believed the witch accuser without question. The women just pointed and shrieked, fell on the floor, rolled around and screamed like hyenas. And nothing stopped them. No courts, no common sense, no one to stop rushes to judgment, and best of all, a pile of victims getting bigger and bigger with no one to raise a red flag (until the rich people were accused). In a backdoor way, Zerlina Maxwell is arguing for the rights of the media to slash and burn also without waiting for the facts to come in--which is what they do anyway. Look at UVA, it's all there.

Zerlina's world.

UVA took the accuser's word for it, obviously, and began punishing the frats and making sweeping statements before the truth came out. Wasn't that good enough for Zerlina? And doesn't it all remind you of Duke University and their damning of the lacrosse boys who turned out to be completely and overwhelmingly innocent? Another rush to judgment, another huge mistake.

Zerlina's utopian paradise.

No one "wrongly disbelieved" Jackie. They behaved as if her claim had validity and the press did also before the facts were in. The costs are tremendous if you are at the vengeful end of the stick. What have been the costs to this Jackie? We don't even know who she is, and this also points out the extreme danger of feminists making ever louder arguments for allowing anonymous accusations. That is giving accusers far, far too much power.

Why is Ruchika Tulshyan Making Jill Abramson Into a Feminist Martyr?

Who is Ruchika Tulshyan of Forbes.Com and why should anyone care? In the bigger picture of doing her part to create and nurture media myths by means of fact avoidance, hearsay, and transparently false conclusions, no one in my opinion does it better. But how can we fault a woman working for Forbes who looks like a gorgeous international model? We'll start with common sense. On the matter of the Jill Abramson firing from the NYT, Ruchika Tulshyan succeeds in black-and-whiting the sad circumstance to suit her own ambitions. How you ask? By inappropriately martyring the legendary "Good Bad" Jill Abramson, making her the stereotypical victim of the merciless patriarchy that hates "assertive women" who dare to demand equal pay. Based on Ruchika's first grade life math, Abramson was an assertive woman (1). She didn't get paid as much as her male counterpart Keller (1), so therefore, when Abramson allegedly confronted "the top brass," she was fired.

NO real thought process needed. No complications or unknowns. Judge All-Men-Suck has boomed her gavel. Those damnable penises are at it again! Emotional participation in the agony of the victim has never been more accessible, desired, or self-righteous. We are all infused with the rape of justice. Thank you so much, Ruchika. As women, we all needed that fix. Or did we?

But wait, we have ever greater proof of Ruchika's contention. Her supporting evidence is neatly presented in her Forbes article:

"Auletta’s post suggests that Abramson confronted “the top brass” about her alleged pay gap, which irked them. He says this fed into the Times’ narrative of her “pushy” personality. That word – loaded and undeniably gendered – speaks to the deeper issues women face when they demand anything."

Let's move on. In reading and mulling over our mediagenic darling's version of reality on the matter of Abramson's firing, it becomes increasingly difficult to draw a line between sheer ignorance and media feminist ambition. Perhaps she simply desires to belong to the right club, and what better way to demonstrate allegiance than by capitalizing on the opportunity presented by Abramson's misfortune?

But let's be wiser, just for a minute, if possible. Let's do the real life math, one more like algebra, a math that reveals life to be complex, full of nuances, unknowns, politics and social relationships that graph up and down depending on the day and environment. A world of Good Jill, Bad Jill, as revealed in the now famous Newsweek article.

It takes maturity to understand that life isn't always black and white, especially in a high-powered executive office culture where Type A egos do battle on a daily basis. Opinions, tempers, and shifting alliances can rule or ruin the day. And it takes experience and a mature viewpoint to understand this. If only such rationality could rule the media piranha and counteract the smell of blood. If only … Unfortunately though, for all concerned, there exists a new generation of feminist media type who is hungry, narcissistic, and looking to make waves, hoping for that shot at MSNBC or CNN, and when such types see a potential feminist martyr in the making and a chance to fault the patriarchy, you better get out of their way or they and their friends will smear you all the way to a social media hell of condemnation you never imagined possible. Just ask feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers who receives hate mail any time she is courageous enough to challenge blatantly false statements issued by the AAUW, e.g., regarding the alleged wage gap between men and women.

Just as the AAUW ignores its own study data to keep the victim fires burning hot (rather than rejoice in the victories of working women everywhere), so do media feminists like Ruchika Tulshyan, and Melissa Silverstein of Forbes (who sees the "tremendous context" in the Abramson firing), conveniently ignore the unknowns and nuances in the Jill Abramson case. They also ignore the simple fact that the more women are hired, the more will be fired. It's been happening to men for a long time. Given their strident and indignant tenor though, you might be led to believe that only men deserve to be fired. Women in leadership positions should never be subjected to such a terror. Perhaps we need to new law.

So where is the truth? If a fair minded, rational human being reads an in-depth article on Jill Abramson, they will quickly see that an application of life algebra makes more sense that Ruchika‘s  predictable, first grade arithmetic. Looking back for a moment at the downturn of a woman even more famous than Jill, recall that we all saw Hillary Clinton lose to Obama, and in the aftermath of that loss, many of us we were forced to listen to certain feminist media types on CNN and elsewhere blaming "male media sexists" for her defeat, especially because they so often referred to her as "Hillary." Like snakes on the plane, the sexists had infiltrated, conspired and crashed Hillary to the earth. It was never Hillary's fault, or the fault of any female staffer. It was those damnable worms of patriarchy! Those Moby media Dicks deserving the wrath of scores of feminist Ahabs. Wasn't it obvious? Didn’t they force Hillary to voice her shocking and obvious lie about being shot at in Bosnia? Weren’t they manipulating her every stumble on the campaign trail?

But we all know that our former hero’s defeat wasn’t that simple. Hillary made choices, wrong ones, and her Bosnia backpeddaling on late night talk shows didn’t help her case. Regardless, scapegoating men when convenient and politically expedient, whether for Hillary’s missteps or Abramson’s firing, is at minimum a very bad habit that allows us, as women, to avoid any responsibility, while at the same time teaching young women to suspect a lurking man perp around every corner (and to take up their own habit of dodging responsibility).

Like Hillary Clinton, Jill Abramson is responsible for her own fate, despite all the hearsay, lies, and gossip to the contrary designed to reduce her to a feminist victim. And why did the final blow strike? We will never know. We weren’t there, were we? Could it have been a titanic battle with the NYT hierarchy over employee appointments? Staff firings? Her attorney snooping around? A loss of trust? A characteristic Abramson “assertive” tactic thrown like a hand grenade in the board room? A phony claim of discrimination begun by a subordinate and “leaked” to the press? All of the above? None of the above?

Again, we’ll never know for sure. Perhaps one day Jill herself will come clean and tell us, thereby dispelling her bogus new martyrdom created by the likes of Ruchika Tulshyan and Melissa Silverstein for their own gain.