I have seen LBJ quoted as saying:
Does anyone have any info on the circumstances, or lack thereof, of this statement?
Running the quote through Google gets 13 hits some of which attribute the quote to Robert Heinlein.
None of the sites cite a cite.
I found one site that attributes it to LBJ but gives no provenance.
Oh … and that site gives it as “fingerfucking and carpet-bombing”
No LBJ biographers here, I guess. Yeah, I found the same sites and reached the same conclusions. It is an interesting statement, if he made it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Heinlein made the statement.
No truly factual content, but I’m having trouble imagining LBJ saying “indigenous”. Try it… I don’t think it can be done.
No LBJ biographers here, I guess. Yeah, I found the same sites and reached the same conclusions. It is an interesting statement, if he made it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Heinlein made the statement.
If it is Heinlein, it’s good odds it’s from the section in the middle of Time Enough for Love.
I’m with you Rube. And sorry to all for the double post.
I can’t find it in any Heinlein book I own, and I own them all. Doesn’t mean he didn’t say it, although it really doesn’t SOUND like him. Robert was a gentleman, and usually didn’t utter vulgarities in his works.
A good point.
I haven’t ever heard the quote before, and I know Heinlein’s works quite well.
Though he was a gentleman in person, he was no prude, and would probably consider using such a quote in a book, if he felt it served a overwhelming literary purpose (his editors were more reticent). My objection, based on a long alcohol-fueld discussion with him, is that he was quite conversant with sexual practices around the world. I doubt he would ever imagine that this basic sexual act could be an American invention. In fact, I recall him recounting that the 18th century verb “to fug” described this very practice
Only a a truly provincial mind could imagine this practice was ‘Made in the USA’! Heck, chimps and bonobos do it in the wild!
Why would you have trouble imagining LBJ saying “indigenous”? He wasn’t a hick. He had a college education, and he was a schoolteacher before he entered politics.
Ok. So then, LBJ might have said it, and Heinlein probably didn’t. We are making progress.
Ok. So then, LBJ might have said it, and Heinlein probably didn’t. We are making progress.
Walloon, I know he was an educated, intelligent man. It’s just something I have trouble imagining him saying, from what I recall of how he talked. As I said, it wasn’t factual, just a failure of imagination.
There’s also the very good point that the quotation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, so it’s hard to imagine either of those shewd men saying it.
I ran this by Fred Shapiro over at the American Dialect Society. He had never heard of it. And he is THE best person on quotations in the world today.
Could either Heinlein or LBJ have said it. Sure.
Did either of them(or anyone else, for that matter) say it–probably not.
[As a side note, Dr. Shapiro volunteered the info that Robert Burns referred to finger-fucking in print 120 years before anyone in the US–and you thought he only talked about spiders!]
Alright, then. I give up the chase. I am concluding that the quote is a fake.