A couple of weeks ago, two articles about Sheryl Sandberg came out, one of which could be interpreted as slightly critical, the other of which actually was pretty critical. The former was written by the New York Times’ Jodi Kantor; the latter was written by Maureen Dowd. Also, someone wrote something about Sandberg and Marissa Mayer in USA Today, which no one read.

On the basis of those three articles, Sandberg defenders have quickly attacked the “backlash” against the Facebook COO. The Daily Beast ran a piece entitled “The Absurd Sandberg Backlash.” Slate published “The Backlash against Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg: Why Do We Hate Successful Women?” (Answer: We don’t.) The New Yorker writes: “Maybe You Should Read the Book: The Sheryl Sandberg Backlash.” On HuffPo, a “digital strategist and writer” (just…no) named Nisha Chittal wrote “On the Sheryl Sandberg Backlash.”

…Women are tearing Sandberg down….

Touchy, touchy.

Because, let’s face it, you come out with a book telling women how they can succeed just like you did—when how you succeeded was the result not only of your hard work, intelligence and ambition, but also a life of privilege, the support of powerful men like Larry Summers and Mark Zuckerberg, great timing and good luck—you’re going to take some heat for it. If you can’t stand that heat…

And let’s face it, too: Sandberg may have addressed sexism in a number of ways—most of which seem to involve blaming women for making the wrong choices—but I can think of a number of ways in which she hasn’t. What, for example, did she say about the “women are less genetically gifted at science and math” talk by her mentor, Larry Summers. She defended his record on helping women: “What few seem to note is that it is remarkable that he was giving the speech in the first place…”

I haven’t read Sandberg’s book, so I went and watched—twice—the TED talk on which it is based and which, I gather, it largely resembles.

It’s a fascinating piece of performance art, this talk. Sandberg is a terrific speaker—poised, likeable, polished. A lot of of hard work went into making this talk look easy, and I mean that as a compliment. Somewhat less appealing—to me, anyway—is the amount of work that Sandberg has put into her appearance; she’s pretty clearly sexin’ it up, while giving herself some plausible deniability. Sandberg strikes me as a bit vain in this way, but I realize that’s subjective; other people may just think she dresses well.

Regardless, when you dig beneath the visuals, this talk shows no evidence of serious thought. It’s smart in the sense that it’s strategic and calculated—there are lots of little defense (from criticism) mechanisms embedded within it—and it’s smart in the sense that there are lots of Malcolm Gladwell-like buzzwords and references to “data”—as in, “the data show”—both of which go over big at TED.

But in the actual substance, this talk is sort of dumb. There’s not a part of it that didn’t strike me as clever, but facile. Consider the anecdote about her brother at Harvard, which lends itself to so many other interpretations than the one she gives it; and yet, she uses it as if it’s representative of various truths about men and women. Or the statistic about how the more powerful women are, the less they’re seen as likable, which can be explained in some very interesting ways—assuming it’s even true—but Sandberg just uses as self-evident proof that we don’t like powerful women. I don’t want to deconstruct it too much, but I think a lot of our reaction to this talk depends on a) how visually well it’s delivered, and b) the fact that, as Fox Mulder used to say, we want to believe.

Sandberg’s clearly no dummy, and I’m sure her book will generate lots of useful discussions. But she’s putting herself out there about a very personal issue from a really elitist position: tons of money, a team of publicists, vast amounts of “social capital,” as one of her followers put it, lots of people who want to suck up to her because she’s clearly going to be a powerful person for some time to come…

It’s hard to worry too much about this “backlash,” when the knee-jerk response to it has already consumed far more “ink” (as it were) than the original criticisms. Particularly silly is the idea that women criticizing Sandberg demonstrates how women fail to support each other and tear each other down. Let’s give women some credit here; they’re capable of independent thought. Though you wouldn’t know it from the backlash against the backlash.

If I were invited to a Lean-In Group, which would come as something of a surprise, here are some questions I would suggest for discussion.

1) Numerous major companies are signing on to support Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” program. Are they doing so because it’s good public relations and it allows them to avoid more unpleasant issues about women in the workplace—like maternity leave, pay equity and so on—or because Sheryl Sandberg knows people at these companies or because they just really believe in what she’s doing, gosh darn it.

2) Facebook’s not doing so great. Teenagers are rapidly tuning out in favor of Instagram and other services, growth is slowing to a crawl, the Times’ Nick Bilton reports that Facebook actively suppresses news feeds when they are not paid for, and pretty much everyone who uses Facebook hates it. Is Sheryl Sandberg really as successful as we’ve been told, or is she just the lucky recipient of very generous press—in part due to the fact that she’s a woman in an industry where women are pretty scarce—who had the good fortune to ride the wave of joining hugely successful companies? And will she now be leaving Facebook just as the going gets tough?

3) Has Sheryl Sandberg’s gender been an obstacle for her at Larry Summers’ Treasury or in the “male-dominated Silicon Valley,” or a source of her advancement?

4) Sandberg interviewed Oprah Winfrey at Facebook in September 2011. Is there a connection between Sandberg’s relationship with Winfrey and the fact that Winfrey is Harvard’s 2013 Commencement speaker?

5) Has Sheryl Sandberg ever really fought for anything difficult? Something that, even if it were the right thing to do, cost her personally or professionally?

See, here’s the thing about Sandberg, really: All this talk about gender is just a smokescreen. It’s a way of Sandberg raising her profile as a prelude to a political career.

But the issue that really divides executives and working people in this country isn’t gender, it’s power. And in my experience, people who accumulate power (and wealth ) tend to act more with far greater class cohesion than do people of the same gender. That’s why Marissa Mayer is making people stop telecommuting even as she builds a nursery for her own kid next door to her office. It’s not that she hates working parents. It’s that she can.

Now, a talk about the increasing consolidation of power among, say, the TED class would be an interesting conversation to have. But the people protesting the “backlash” are making it hard. They’re saying it’s unfair to talk about Sandberg’s wealth. That it’s bad for women even to criticize Sandberg.

Like Tom Sawyer and his fence painters, they are doing her work for her.