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.