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The best thing Valleywag ever did for Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was to call her a liar. That's just not done in the genteel office parks of Silicon Valley. It garnered the embattled executive a much-needed wave of sympathy within her company, on which she's now planning to capitalize.Valleywag's coverage last week of Sandberg's spinning in response to the departure of a key employee was deemed, in some quarters, a "character attack." Yet Sandberg's character is the very issue here. Her response is very telling: First, she wrangled a long followup story from her frequent dinner guest Kara Swisher that called our story sexist, over-the-top — and factually correct. Swisher's report is damning for Sandberg. It acknowledges that Facebook executive Matt Cohler, who left to join Benchmark Capital, was unhappy with Sandberg's leadership. It reports that Jonathan Heiliger, the company's infrastructure chief, has also been unhappy with Sandberg — Swisher errs only in saying that the two have patched things up. Swisher's new report also means that the version of Ben Ling's departure fed to her by the company last week was false. Facebook executives have acknowledged all these facts. But characteristically, Sandberg has steered the discussion away from the real problem — the bad decisions she's made, the poor judgment she's demonstrated — and toward massaging reality. She is, even now, planning a new PR campaign to buff her image. Did it ever occur to Sandberg to figure out why she rubs so many of Facebook's technical leaders the wrong way? Could it have anything to do with her meddling in matters that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said aren't her job? Facebook has real problems in Sandberg's area of responsibility. Billing, customer service, and other mundane-but-critical aspects of the social network's advertising operations are chaotic, and require fixing. Sandberg's moves to shore up her image suggest the real reason for her unpopularity within Facebook: Her overwhelming concern for style over substance. How ironic that that pointing that out has sent Sandberg spinning.