“How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can’t say and what we can show and what we can’t show — it’s enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak.”
Robert A. Heinlein, in The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950)
7 replies on “Cancel Culture Isn’t New”
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” If I’m not mistaken, it is pure Heinlein, or at least he made the phrase famous.
TANSTAAFL! – I think the sentiment was around prior to Heinlein putting into his writings. But it needs a comeback.
Have read that story many a time. And as Davey points out, it wasn’t new even in 1950.
Elon Musk = DD Harriman.
“Elon Musk = DD Harriman” is a good analogy.
I’ve not read Heinlein, but the quote seemed familiar.
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” Mark Twain
Heinlein many times remarked that professional writers were masters of “taking someone else’s words, scraping off the serial number, giving them a shiny coat of paint and passing them of as our own.”
Lol, yeah, I knew cancel culture wasn’t anything new but …
Major kudos for digging up that Heinlein quote.