Me! Me! Me! Me!
Her people skills could use some work.
On the morning she was supposed to inspire Wake Forest University grads with tales of journalistic resilience, Jill Abramson instead chose to talk about the subject dearest to her heart. That would be Jill Abramson — victim of sexism, martyr to the sisterhood, a poor, little tattooed dame fired by a very bad man at The New York Times from a more than half-million-dollar-a-year job.
My heart bleeds.
In her first public comments about her dumping last week as executive editor of the Grey Lady — the first woman to hold the post in the history of the journalistic universe — Abramson, 60, on Monday gave a commencement speech at the North Carolina campus.
But if you expected humility, the unemployed leftist, wearing a black graduation gown, blue running shoes and a sarcastic grin, aggressively went on a chick offensive.
“Now I’m telling anyone who’s been dumped’’ — a term that evokes images of a woman scorned by a lover — “you bet! Not gotten the job you wanted or received those horrible rejection letters from grad school, you know the sting of losing or not getting the thing you badly want. When that happens, show what you are made of.”
She recounted being asked by a student if she would have an unfortunate tattoo of the letter “T’’ in Times-masthead font removed from her back, a disturbing sign of obsession with her former employer.
“Not a chance!’’ she said to laughs from a crowd estimated at 12,000, including 1,800 graduates.
She told a story about how she was hit by a truck seven years ago in Times Square — “you may begin to call me Calamity Jill’’ — a clear analogy to her whiny refrain that she’s been run over by a boss man. Then she mentioned a Times story about a 9-year-old boy who lost his life after being struck by a cab, but this tale was about her.
She also evoked the name of Anita Hill, the woman whose sex-harassment claims nearly derailed conservative Clarence Thomas’ 1991 US Supreme Court appointment.
Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University, “was one of the many who wrote me last week to say she was proud of me,’’ Abramson said.
Of course, Thomas, confirmed, now sits on the high court.
“Sure, losing a job you love hurts,’’ she said. “What’s next for me? I don’t know. So I’m in exactly the same boat as many of you. And like you, I’m a little scared but also excited.”
All this drama. At heart, this is a rather tedious story about an overpaid editor of a liberal rag who believed she should make more money. As reported on the website of The New Yorker magazine, Abramson earned $475,000 when appointed executive editor in 2011, then discovered that her predecessor, Bill Keller, raked in $559,000 at the time he left the post. Her salary was then hiked to $503,000, then $525,000, journalist Ken Auletta reported. She also found out that Keller made more than she did when Abramson previously replaced him as managing editor. So she hired a lawyer.
But Times publisher Arthur “Pinch’’ Sulzberger Jr., 62, insists that sexism played no role in his decision to fire Abramson and replace her with former managing editor Dean Baquet, 57. Sulzberger maintains that last year, Abramson made over 10 percent more than Keller did when you take into account things like bonuses and stock grants.
Are we really supposed to feel sorry for her?
Sulzberger went on to trash Abramson in a statement issued Saturday, writing, “During her tenure, I heard repeatedly from her newsroom colleagues, women and men, about a series of issues, including arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues.”
Some will say that Abramson was trounced by a male-dominated culture. I think she was canned because she got along with practically no one. Whatever you think, don’t cry for Jill Abramson.
She can take care of herself.