Rev. Neil O’Farrell considers what happens when talented people hope to rise.
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Jill Abramson was the first female executive editor of the New York Times until she was very publicly fired last week. Several reasons are percolating to the surface as causative. Wages, for one. She discovered that she was paid less than her predecessor, Bill Keller. She at one time reportedly supervised someone who made more than she.
The truth of these allegations—actual real numbers—have come out in the press, but you could tell the indictment was true because of the weasely words the Times executives used in saying that her pay was “comparable” and in the same ballpark as those men who had preceded her. That is if you considered something like $100,000 less “comparable.”
“We know that when a man is independent and strong, he’s being the male manager he’s supposed to be. When a woman is like that, she is often thought of as a bitch.”
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She didn’t handle this like the likeable lady male corporate executives want around them. First she complained. Then she hired a lawyer to underscore her complaints. And then she was fired, and one of the reasons mentioned is that her bosses at the Times didn’t like that she’d hired a lawyer. Considering the circumstances, hiring an attorney seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for her to have done.
She was also accused of making independent hiring decisions, and of being abrasive and sometimes tough to deal with. She was the executive editor, for God sakes. Hiring people was part of her job description. And we know that when a man is independent and strong, he’s being the male manager he’s supposed to be. When a woman is like that, she is often thought of as a bitch.
And the New York Times is not like a knitting circle. You can’t be in the media business today without brass intestines.
If all that weren’t serious enough, for some reason it appears that the men in charge thought people wouldn’t notice the Times had summarily run its executive editor out of town on a rail. This is the New York Times, arguably the premiere paper published in the world, located in the news capital of the world. She was the executive editor. Someone didn’t think that would be noticed? Really? And this type of man is in charge? Again, really?
And all the people making the decisions were, as I’ve said, naturally, men. Powerful men, but men who are used to their power and used to not having it questioned. They might keep that fiction alive in the office tower where the Times is located, but in the rest of the world, from the President on down, men in powerful jobs have all manner of their decisions questioned. Many of us think in the 21st Century, questioning why people, including men, do things seems a natural pastime. However, there are still bastions of male privilege that believe they are entitled to unquestioned decision making. Poor dears.
So it comes down to the fact that she was an “uppity woman” in a world where uppity women might be given fancy, exalted titles, but should still be deferential to the men they are surrounded by. One can’t help but consider whether the black man who serves as U.S. President has such difficulties, particularly with Southern members of Congress, because he got uppity, too. I would not be the first to suggest such a thing.
People, in spite of sounds they make to the contrary, are loath to share, particularly when we are talking about the prerequisites of power. I used to be nervous if I took a few extra minutes for lunch. However, everyone in the brand-name accounting firm for which I worked knew that the male partners would go out for several games of handball during the middle of the day, a leisurely lunch, and return to the office sometime toward the end of the day.
Life is not fair, and boy don’t most of us know it.
However, the owners and executives of the doughty New York Times are very much like those accounting firm partners accustomed to their lengthy lunches that are never questioned by the underlings. Even if you have the title of executive editor, if you are a woman, you are expected nonetheless to show decorum and deference. As Jill Abramson discovered, what is given can so easily be snatched away.
All of us who are “other” know we have to be careful. “Other” is defined by being a woman, a person of color, gay or lesbian, not having gone to the right school, or not having any of the other correct and proper credentials that the inside crowd with the power and prestige have. Life is a lot like the divisions between the football team and the geeks in high school. The stakes just get higher once you enter the business world.
“The executives of the New York Times sit in their lavish offices on the upper reaches of the Times office tower. They’ve decided the only thing worse than having to deal with all the bad publicity is having to deal with an uppity woman.”
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I was fired from my first job as a news reporter. I was a magna cum laude journalism graduate of the state university. But I wasn’t one of the boys. And too late I realized that I shouldn’t act uppity either, and this included expressing a sense of humor that wasn’t deferential enough to the lords of the fourth estate. I was out the door, no questions asked, very little reason given. Jill Abramson at least knows the reasons.
She reached an agreement with the Times, so there will be no litigation surrounding her departure, although it sure looks like actionable wrongful termination on the basis of gender to any of us giving it even a passing glance. However, several books will be written, exposès like the one Abramson wrote about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that seemed to prove Anita Hill’s claims were correct that she had to work in a hostile work environment of Thomas’s making. But the boys stick together, and Thomas sits on the Supreme Court like Jabba the Hutt after perjuring himself in his confirmation hearings. Vice President Biden was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time.
The executives of the New York Times sit in their lavish offices on the upper reaches of the Times office tower. They’ve decided the only thing worse than having to deal with all the bad publicity is having to deal with an uppity woman.
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–Photo: AP
The best article I’ve read at GMP in awhile.
I’m confused by this article. Is the article on Jill Abramson’s side, or not? Reading this: “from the President on down, men in powerful jobs have all manner of their decisions questioned,” I would think the author is saying that men are subject to having their decisions constantly questioned too, so it’s a problem that goes with being in charge, not with just being a woman. Most of the rest of the article gives the other impression, that women are unfairly (differently) treated The article sounds like it’s written FROM a woman’s perspective: “I wasn’t one of the boys. And… Read more »