As the publication has evolved, what’s been projected is a hands-on, team effort, predominately between Ms. Shen and Mr. Reutter, as a welcome dynamic duo in our otherwise dismal media market dominated by corporate and government *press-titute* outlets.

The editorial scope of The Brew, however, also seems to have anomalies and inherent bias on occasion, directed and influenced by a single individual, from my perspective. This enlightening *claws out* reversal episode confirms that observation.
Ms. Shen’s overwrought account displays a systemic dysfunction. While I respect the ambition of The Brew, and its apparent *boss*, I do not respect her washout of conviction.
The time for Fern Shen to argue with Mark Reutter over the PC implications of the headline had passed. So be it. To surface now, after the fact, with this hand-wringing, retroactive mea culpa is a self-referential act of colleague betrayal, in my world view. It also unfortunately casts The Brew as a publication that backs off when swayed by a tempest-in-a-teapot form of gender-biased, political correctness. That act sullies the publication, and projects leadership guided by something uncomfortably close to a chick-lit mentality, and not that of a professional collaborative effort.
While the choice of a single headline was admittedly a bit off-kilter, Ms. Shen’s decision to reverse course in retrospect, and highlight the issue while already downstream, reveals that her personal priorities are to her gender and not to her fellow journalistic combatants or the majority of The Brew’s readership.

Give me a break–O please–
what a stodgy fussy group–
it’s beautiful to be feline-
to unsheathe curved sharp claws–
to arch the back and take long swipes
at enemies who want to engage
in power struggles–

It isn’t good some of you say
to call two women in combat mode–cats–
or to describe their fight as cat scratch fever–
no, no it denigrates all women–
it is a negative stereotype–

Give me a break–O please!
it is the lying in wait
that cats do so well–
it is the stalking–
the patient–soft footed shadowing of the prey–
the accurate sizing up of the kill yet to happen–
the length to be run–
the speed to be mustered–
the time to start and the time to finish
calculated well beforehand–
and then the sprint for the throat–
there is beauty in all of it–

Let the snarky metaphors stay–
don’t bleach the language white–
when two women fight–
and they’re called cats–
don’t bring the protest banners out–
and when the women draw blood–
if the chronicler of the event–
calls the episode cat scratch fever–
cheer on!

Arch your back–
purr and shimmy your muscles–
if you are a woman–be a sauce box–
not a lost cause–
to the stained glass wickedness of words….

Usha Nellore