Given my interest in Buddy Fletcher, I can’t help but be fascinated by the ongoing saga of his wife, Ellen Pao, who, after losing her sex discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, has now resigned under pressure from her position as interim CEO of Reddit.

I’m not a Reddit user, and so I’m reluctant to propose conclusions about what really happened to Pao there; given the levels of intrigue about the ins and outs of the site, this feels like a story that’s very hard for the mainstream media to understand.

(I felt the same way about the Grateful Dead shows in Chicago a couple weeks ago, as when various non-Deadhead music writers criticized the band for playing the beautiful and powerful song “Days Between” as slowing down the band’s finals show, without realizing what resonance it has for Deadheads who remember the wistful beauty with which Jerry Garcia sang it. But I digress.)

But you don’t have to be a Reddit expert to know bad media coverage, and the Times provides a perfect example of it with its story on Pao, aggressively titled “It’s Silicon Valey 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism is Out at Reddit.”

Let’s start with the headline and then say a few words about the actual content of the article.

To label Pao a “fighter of sexism” is to accept her proposition that fighting sexism was the raison d’être of her lawsuit, rather than the $16 million she hoped to get paid—money that she and her husband desperately need given his enormous financial debts. (He’s something like $150 million in debt.) Is it fair to describe Pao as a fighter of sexism when a jury of six men and six women found that she was not a victim of sexism?

“Fighter of sexism” is obviously a loaded term, and it aligns the Times squarely behind Pao, as does the rest of the headline: “Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0″, making it sound as if big bad Silicon Valley is picking on poor put-upon Pao. According to the Times, there are only two sides here: Silicon Valley and the fighter against sexism. This is how history is written, so…it matters.

Here’s how the Times frames the story:

Ms. Pao’s abrupt downfall in the face of a torrent of sexist and racist comments, many of them on Reddit itself, is quite likely to renew charges that bullying, harassment and cruel behavior are out of control on the web — and that Silicon Valley’s well-publicized problem with gender and ethnic diversity in its work force persists.

I get that there was bigotry and sexism in many of the comments Reddit users wrote about Pao. Part of me deplores them; part of me thinks, “Welcome to the Internet.”

What’s unclear to me is how much substance there was in the allegations that Pao was a bad CEO; after all, over 200, 000 Reddit users signed a petition calling on her to step down. Is that because she is a woman and Asian? Or is it because she just wasn’t very good at her job—which is exactly what Kleiner Perkins said of Pao.

Amidst the swirl of bias allegations, we now have two highly competitive institutions—Kleiner Perkins and Reddit—suggesting that, in fact, Ellen Pao is, at the very least, a difficult personality. This is the kind of thing that makes these sexism allegations hard to dismiss; some men are difficult personalities—Steve Jobs was a difficult personality—but their fans don’t seem to care. Yet when a woman is a difficult personality….

But perhaps difficulty is tolerated not because of gender, but because of talent. Jobs got away with being difficult—well, except when he was fired from Apple for it—because he was a genius. Maybe Ellen Pao is difficult and just, you know, a pretty smart person. That was the impression I got watching this interview with Katie Couric, where, every time Pao was asked about the lawsuit, she repeats the mantra, “We’re not talking about it.” After about the fifth time she says that, Couric has to help her out and say, “And you’re not talking about it because you’re thinking of appealing the verdict?”

Pap also refuses to answer a question about her husband in a sort of odd, off-putting way.

And I suppose that this is crucial to some of my own skepticism about Pao. First, there are times, like in the interview above, where she comes across as robotic and weird. (And yes, I know that “robotic” is a loaded term to apply to an Asian person, but…watch the interview.)

Second, she married a man who is bizarrely litigious—even though a judge ruled that Fletcher must pay investors in his hedge fund $140 million, and Fletcher is being sued by various law firms for non-payment of millions of dollars in legal fees, Fletcher is still pursuing his racial discrimination lawsuit against the Dakota, which wouldn’t sell him an apartment on the grounds that his finances were shaky—and, in my opinion, of questionable character. (There’s evidence to suggest that Fletcher drained his funds dry, including pension monies for Louisiana firefighters, to support a lavish lifestyle.)

Is it sexist to suggest that Pao’s relationship with Fletcher is part of what one should consider when considering her? Many in the mainstream media seem to think so, because the issue is largely avoided there. And maybe in a courtroom, her marriage isn’t relevant. But when considering the entirety of a person—her character, her motivations—I don’t see how you can ignore it.