In the Internet world, a dose of truth serum is pretty easy to find -- although one MUST validate the source. While the New York Times has had its share of political writing scandal this year, especially in its Hillary Clinton coverage, the newspaper remains a comparatively reliable, fact-checking source. A recollection by feminist icon Gloria Steinem was lodged in my brain.

Reading about this week's dustup over Gay Talese's comments on women writers who made an impression on him in his formative years as a writer, I had to lay the puzzle pieces out on the table.

Gay Talese At Boston University

On Friday, April 1, the dapper-dressing writer Talese spoke at Boston University's 'Power of Narrative' conference. Quoting the Times:

During the Q. and A. session, the poet Verandah Porche, one of the approximately 550 audience members, asked him, according to the transcript provided by Boston University, “In addition to Nora Ephron, who were the women who write who were most, who have inspired you most?”

“Did I hear you say what women have inspired me most?” Mr. Talese said.

“As writers.”

“As writers,” Mr. Talese said. “Uh, I’d say Mary McCarthy was one. I would, um, [pause] think [pause] of my generation [pause] um, none. I’ll tell you why. I’m not sure it’s true, it probably isn’t true anymore, but my — when I was young, maybe 30 or so, and always interested in exploratory journalism, long-form, we would call it, women tended not, even good writers, women tended not to do that. Because being, I think, educated women, writerly women, don’t want to, or do not feel comfortable dealing with strangers or people that I’m attracted to, sort of the offbeat characters, not reliable.”

Revenge By Tweet Storm

“In many ways Gay Talese is a revolutionary, in others he’s an 84 yo guy from NJ,” one tweet said. And this: “This keynote just became a case study in the deep thread of chauvinism that still runs through journalism.” The hashtag #womengaytaleseshouldread sprang up. Under this heading the longtime New Yorker writer Susan Orlean tweeted: “Lillian Ross. Joan Didion. Janet Malcolm. Jane Kramer. I’m just getting started here, folks.”

A Boys Club Rescue By Sridhar Pappu

Enter New York Times freelance writer Sridhar Pappu who writes on media, politics, sports and life in New York. His upcoming book is about the 1968 World Series. In this case, Pappu inserted himself into the Gay Talese is sexist storm, writing Gay Talese Goes Through the Twitter Wringer for Thursday's NYT Style Section.

Presumably the two men share a love of baseball and sports, and Pappu was a sympathetic shoulder for the narration that wandered with a compass pointed in the direction of Nikole Hannah-Jones, an investigative reporter whose beat is racial injustice for The New York Magazine. Her tweet really got under his skin, wrote Pappu:

**"It is inevitable: Your icons will always disappoint you."**

Fumbling on a grand scale, Gay Talese explaned to the fashion and style crowd:

“I was up there on that stage in Boston and I couldn’t think of anybody,” he continued. “So I said, ‘None.’ I was giving an honest answer. I wasn’t going to be influenced by anybody at age 56 or 70 or 84. I’m not speaking about the writers of the feminist movement or the nonfiction writers for the 1970s or ’80s. I’m talking about my formative years. I’m talking about ancient history now, but it’s the only history I come out of. I wish someone on stage had asked me, ‘What do you mean by that?’”

Poet Verandah Porche and Nikole Hannah-Jones Talk Talese

For women like Verandah Porche and Nikole Hannah-Jones, Talese's remarks cut in part because they felt familiar. via Rewire

Sharing the sting he felt reading Hannah-Jones' Twitter rebuke, Talese explained:

"I'd like to talk to her sometime. Why did she have to ask for a selfie after what I said made her so upset? I want to know why. (Perhaps to get the shoe shot?)

“They said people walked out. Why didn’t she walk out? And she’s a person of great personal achievement. She’s a serious journalist, and I respect her. How could she be so duplicitous as to write me off with a quote?”

Poet Verandah Porche (who asked the question of Talese in Boston) and Nikole Hannah-Jones (above) did compare notes about the Gay Talese experience in an article on Rewire. Porche expressed feelings of being erased as a woman writer, watching Talese struggle to name any women writers who inspired him. Women in the audience began shouting out names -- Sandy Tolan, an author and professor of narrative journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, shouted “Joan Didion?”

“I’m glad you reminded me,” Talese responded. “But she doesn’t deal with antisocial people. She’s an educated, beautiful writer.”

Talese had earlier made the point that educated women writers don't like gritty people, the source of his own inspiration. It gets worse. Rewire shares the insults:

Immediately after his keynote, Talese walked over to attend a private luncheon for speakers. He met Nikole Hannah-Jones, who has won widespread acclaim for her coverage of racial segregation in schools and housing. Hannah-Jones delivered Friday’s keynote address, launching the conference. But when she was introduced to him as a New York Times Magazine staff writer, Talese was more curious about how she got her job.

“He asked again if I was actually a staff writer. And I said yes,” Hannah-Jones told me by phone on Monday. He asked her how she got hired for that job. “I said they called and offered me a job,” she recalled. “He asked me who hired me, why was I hired?”

Hannah-Jones said she was the only Black person in the room.

“I felt defensive,” Hannah-Jones recalled. “I feel like I’ve been explaining why I’m in a room where apparently people think I’m not supposed to be most of my life, so I know when someone is asking me that question.”

The conversation moved on to other topics. But at the end of the luncheon, Talese asked Hannah-Jones something else.

“I was talking with another woman journalist,” Hannah-Jones recalled. “We were trying to figure out what session we were going to go to next, and that’s when he asked me if I was going to get my nails done.”

Now, Hannah-Jones, like Talese, is an immaculate dresser, and that extends to her turquoise, baby blue, and glitter nails. But when Talese asked if she, an investigative reporter at one of the nation’s leading publications, planned to skip out on the journalism conference at which they were both keynote speakers to head to the salon, Hannah-Jones did not even know what to say.

“Part of it was, I mean, I just come from a family where respect for your elders is very ingrained, but part of it is feeling like, honestly, as a Black woman, that it would be very hard for me to say something without coming off looking like all the stereotypes that women and Black women get,” Hannah-Jones told me on Monday. “It was a hard moment for me to realize that even at this point in my career I could still be silenced.”

Dean Baquet Responds To 'Gay Talese Goes Through the Twitter Wringer'

NYT execuive editor Dean Baquet issued a response.

“We published a story yesterday about controversial remarks made by the writer Gay Talese concerning female journalists at a conference at Boston University. The story also recounted an exchange between Talese and Nikole Hannah-Jones, a keynote speaker at the conference and a staff writer on our magazine, in which he questioned how she got her job at The Times. In attempting to defend his remarks, Talese was quoted in our story calling her “duplicitous.” Nikole was not given a chance to respond to that, nor was I. Here is what I would have said: I hired Nikole because she is one of the most accomplished and prominent journalists of her generation. She has made it her mission to write about some of the most pressing, intractable issues in American life, particularly racial inequality in education and the re-segregation of American schools. She is a unique combination of a reporter with investigative zeal, unfailing integrity and a writer’s eye for telling, human detail. One of my proudest moments as editor was when Nikole said “yes” and agreed to come to The Times.

Yesterday’s story was flawed and Nikole was treated unfairly. But this incident is larger than the exchange between her and Gay Talese. Too often, we are clumsy in handling issues of race and gender and this story was another unfortunate example. We have made strides in our coverage and culture, but the best solution is to continue building a more diverse, inclusive newsroom.”

WaPo's Marisa Bellack Weighs In On Gay Talese's Sexism

MInutes ago, Marisa Bellack, deputy editor of WaPo's Outlook section dropped her own Talese stink bomb. Bellack explains that we jumped at the chance to work as a teaching assistant to the dapper fashion plate when he was a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Our fallout occurred just a few classes into the semester. During a 10-minute break, Talese asked me to make him a cup of tea. The request seemed vaguely demeaning and inappropriate. But I wasn’t really in a position to consider it. My hands were already full with a stack of handouts he’d asked me to photocopy for him. “I’m on my way to copy these,” I nodded toward the stack. “There’s a kitchen just through there, with a kettle on the stove and an assortment of teas in the cabinet.” Our class met at Penn’s Writers House, a lovely 13-room Victorian on the main campus walk that’s a make-yourself-at-home sort of space. Other students from the class had already congregated in the kitchen — I could hear laughter as someone finished telling a story. I assured Talese that they would help if he had trouble finding anything, and then I headed upstairs to the photocopier.

After class that day, we ended up revisiting the tea episode, and Talese berated me for refusing his request. One comment still sears. “You’re not perky enough for me,” he said.

Bellack gives Talese a pass on the cup of tea, saying 1) she can't prove that he wouldn't have asked the same from a male assistant; and 2) Talese himselfstarted out as a copy boy "getting people coffee and sandwiches, running errands." He is notoriously old school. When Dapper Dan asked her to get him tea, her arms were full of folders headed upstairs for photocopying. She directed him to the kitchen, where she could hear other students chatting. They will help you, if you need it, Bellack says she assured Talese.

Talese's criticism of her for not being 'perky' enough was another topic entirely. Journalist Jessica Bennett says “perky” is among adjectives to excise from your vocabulary if you want “to avoid sounding like a sexist jerk.”

What's so interesting is that I researched the quote my subconscious mind attributed to Gay Talese, the one I recalled him making about Gloria Steinem in the back seat of a taxi. Rewire got to the same quote, and so did Marisa Bellack just now. Gloria told the story in her recent memoir 'My Life on the road. '

Gloria shares tales from the bad old days, like a taxi ride in 1964 with Saul Bellow and Gay Talese. Mr. Talese leaned across her — as if she weren’t there — to explain to Bellow:

“You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.”

When a man comments about female writers, as Gay Talese did about Gloria, and 50 years later asks Nikole Hannah-Jones if she shouldn't get her nails done, then perhaps we should just apply the common adage of not being able to teach at least some old dogs new tricks.

Once a sexist, always a sexist. Goodness knows, it's a year for it out there. Something tells me this story isn't over ~ Anne

Related: Gay Talese's Other Problem Slate