Talese went to some kind of seminar in Boston recently. When asked which women journalists inspired him in his pioneering New Journalism in the 1960s, he answered: “None.”
Talese’s honesty caused Twitter to freak out.
Of course, the reason was that everybody knows, deep down, that women tend not to be pioneers. But that just makes it more scandalous for an old man to mention it.
Looking in Wolfe’s canonical 1973 anthology, T he New Journalism, I see that women writers made 2 of the 23 contributions. The most famous female New Journalist is Joan Didion, but the less well-known Barbara Goldsmith is also represented. Male New Journalists, besides Wolfe and Talese, include Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joe McGinnis, George Plimpton, Terry Southern, and Michael Herr.
Comments to Steve Sailer:
* Old liberals are going to have to stop writing articles or giving interviews if they want to stay out of trouble. The politically correct line changes so quickly it’s impossible for them to keep up. For example, on yesterday’s All Things Considered I learned that the stalwart liberal Calvin Trillin, 80, wrote a humorous poem about the cuisine of different Chinese provinces. It was published in the New Yorker, gatekeeper of the pc line. Nevertheless, it offended some Chinese. Timothy Yu, associate professor of English and Asian-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said, “The major feeling I was getting from people was exasperation, like, can you believe this is happening again? . . . What’s bothersome to a lot of Asian-American readers about it is not the satire; it’s the fact that Chinese things are kind of being used as the punch line or the prop.”
* There is an insatiable Orwellian urge among the modern Left to retcon the past. “The past is a different country” and they just can’t accept that in that country, women, blacks, etc. figured prominently in very few areas. So there is a constant urge to dig up some obscure figure – a black scientist, a female journalist, and retroactively promote him/her to the pinnacle of their profession. And young people are constantly bombarded with the images of these Heroes of Socialism to the point where they begin to think that ALL of the prominent people of the past must have been colorful/female. So when a lying liar like Talese who was actually there tells the truth, it is shocking.
* Following the link to the Times article, I scrolled down to the comments. Most of the comments I read were siding with Mr Talese and against the Times. It’s becoming evident to most how forced this whole shtick is.
* Obama said in speech or QandA session that he’s sorry the newly appointed supreme court justice is a white guy, and that even though he is white, he is a good jurist.
Isn’t that indictable? How is that not hate speech?
