Posted on 05/07/2008 4:31:52 AM PDT by metesky
Edited on 05/07/2008 10:39:39 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
BANGOR, Maine — Stephen King has fired back at conservative critics who attacked him over a remark he made a month ago at a writers symposium for high school students.
A blogger jumped on King´s statement at the Library of Congress about the importance of reading in which he suggested poor readers have limited prospects, including service in the Army.
"I don´t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don´t, then you´ve got the Army, Iraq, I don´t know, something like that. It´s not as bright," King said at the April 4 event in which he was accompanied by his wife Tabitha and son Owen.
Blogger Noel Sheppard likened the comment to former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry´s remarks that if you don´t get a good education, "you get stuck in Iraq."
"Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen," Sheppard wrote.
King fired back Monday.
"That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt," he said in a statement posted on his Web site.
King said he supports the troops but believes the war in Iraq is a "waste of national resources ... and that includes the youth and blood of the 4,000 American troops who have lost their lives there and for the tens of thousands who have been wounded."
"I live in a National Guard town, and I support our troops, but I don´t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career — military or otherwise," King said.
He said the army recruits illiterates. It’s not just his patriotism that is being questioned but his intelligence.
Said that it's not so much King as it is ALL the "elites" in the country who feel this way, and of course know better than us. Then he said that the only book he ever read by King had a stupid ending, because of the Giant Spider. (IT)
I quite enjoyed it, though I'll admit I also enjoyed IT. I wish entertainers would just sthu and perform their craft, rather than show how woefully foolish they are.
Stephen King - 4F draft deferment.
Amen! You can NOT support the troops and not support the mission. Maybe we should all send Mr. King an Email. Many troops go into the service to get their education paid for at the end. What a Doofuss.
King has never been very competent at research. If he would have taken a few minutes to look up the facts before he shot his mouth off he would have found that the military enlisted are better educated than the US population as a whole. I earned three undergraduate degrees and a Master’s degree while in the AF and most of the people that I competed against for promotion to Senior Master Sergeant had at an undergrad degree.
"I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's not as bright,"
>>”I live in a National Guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career” military or otherwise,” King said. <<
It was stated on another thread that he supports the troops by sending them books.
And Joebuck asked, “Why would he give books to people he thinks can’t read?”
Stephen King is a tool.
| Table 2.7 Levels of Education of FY 2002 Active Component NPS Accessions, by Service, and Civilians 18-24 Years Old (Percent) | ||||||
|
Education Level1
|
Army
|
Navy
|
Marine Corps
|
Air Force
|
DoD
|
18- to 24-Year-Old Civilians*
|
| Tier 1: Regular High School Graduate or Higher |
86.4
(91.4**) |
91.9
|
97.4
|
98.6
|
91.9
(94.0**) |
79.4
|
| Tier 2: GED, Alternative Credentials Alternative Credentials |
13.6
|
4.6
|
2.8
|
1.4
|
7.2
|
|
| Tier 3: No Credentials |
0.0
|
3.4
|
0.2
|
0.0
|
0.8
|
20.6
|
| Total |
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
| College Experience (Part of Tier 1)2 |
10.6
|
6.4
|
1.9
|
12.7
|
8.5
|
46.7
|
|
Columns may not add to total due to rounding. |
||||||
SOURCE:
http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2002/chapter2/c2_education.htm
Support the troops but not the mission?
Like supporting literacy but against book publishing.
Stephen King, being a snide little elitist, is incapable of understanding that since the beginning of time there have always been warriors among us who have taken up arms to defend our women, our children, and the snide little elitists among us when enemies threatened their safety. These warriors have not chosen the warrior’s life due to lack of education in the liberal arts or because of promised rewards; warriors are warriors because that’s what warriors do. A warrior’s chosen life is not considered a job; it is a calling.
How do you think this would play?
“If you don't read, then you got Obama, drugs, have to stay in the inner city schools or something like that, its not as bright”
At least he’s not claiming it was a “botched joke.”
Isn’t it true that all officers have undergraduate degrees and the vast majority of them above lieutenant have at least one advanced degree? I’ve dated some majors and colonels and they all had either a couple of master’s degrees or a doctorate. Do you have to get the advanced degree before the military will promote you, or does it come later? I ask because my boy wants to be an officer and we’re trying to do some planning here.
I believe I have persuaded my gung-ho son that a high school diploma is necessary before he joins the USMC. I pointed out that if 50 guys are bucking for promotion, and 49 of them have a high school diploma, who do you think is going to be kicked out of consideration first?
But there's nothing like actual numbers to give reality to a situation.
All officers have an undergrad degree, yes. A fair number have advanced degrees, but it’s not required for promotion. As with any other job, an advanced degree will help you to get noticed above the crowd, but it’s not a requirement. Right about now, the only requirement to make Lieutenant Colonel is that you have a pulse, not if you have a Master’s.
Is this the S King who was a school teacher before he struck it big? Yup, lots of great “education” there. We see the results each day. Again, whenever he wants to match wits with any of my Academy class, just let me know.
I always thought King was strange; he just confirmed it for me.
bookmark...good info.
He claims his webmaster was going on vacation. Yeah, and the dog ate my homework.
Apparently he was inciting his board readers/members to attack the Newsbusters blog for pointing out his stupidity, but his minions were vastly outnumbered by the folks who objected to his siccing the mindless on NB. So he cut and ran like the coward he is.
And a 4-F too, from high blood pressure, flat feet, and bad vision IIRC.
That would be beneath contempt, but that's not why King is being criticized. Maybe King has a problem reading... Let's ship him to Iraq!
Yeah, I don't know what that's all about, I just copied and pasted the source code.
All offciers in the Army must have a degree before being promoted to Captain; however, very few earn a commission w/o a bachelor’s. To be successful, an officer has to continue education, earning a masters at about the senior captian (8-10 years o service) or while a major (10-16 years). Many officers are sent to top-flite schools to earn these degrees and they incur a service obligation usually of 3 years for every year of school the Army pays for. They usually are assigned duties at laboratories or other research & development entities specific to thier specailties, both military and educational.
Hope this helps
God Bless
Thank you madam. I love it. he is just such a wonderful guy. LOL
I would think there must still be some OCS types who escaped unscathed by college . . . but I'm not really up to speed on what's going on now.
Being his neighbor, I can tell you that he is rumored to be even stranger than you thought.
Then you don't support the troops, ass.
He worked in a laundry when he first started writing, before he hit it big.
“King said he supports the troops but believes the war in Iraq is a “waste of national resources “
An analogy for Stephen would be: Some would say they support publishing books; but they are against trees being made into paper.
Post 25 has it dead on in regards to the current standards.
His novels suck.....
....the best of his movies was “The Shining” and he hated it because it did not follow his book......thank God.
Looks like he's using the Tom Daschle "that's outragous!" defense. How dare we question his patriotism when he makes unpatriotic comments!?
Stephen King "suggested" nothing, he didn't "imply". He was upfront and blunt about it.
Meanwhile illiterate dumb Americans who can't read a Stephen King novel can pick up copies of his books on tape. I'll wager that the number of NON-MILITARY persons listening to his books on tape are greater than the number who serve in the military and listen to his books on tape.
What a dumbass antimilitary thing to say.
Maybe he supports the mission and not the troops.
And he produced a made-for-TV remake of the movie with Stephen Webber (Wings) in the Jack Nicholson role. LOL! Yeah, that was much better than Kubrick's flick /s
I'm not sure about the other military branches, but the AF requires a Bachelor's degree before you can be commissioned as an officer. Graduate degrees are not mandatory, but they are considered during officer promotions. I've known several very good officers that were passed over for promotion to Colonel because they didn't have a graduate degree.
i will now shun mr. king’s books just as i shun jane fonda’s films.
This whole brouhaha came up a few days ago. I went to that website to leave my remarks. There was nowhere to do so other than leave remarks about the website itself to the webmaster.
Well, I chose that route. I gave my personal information (accurately) and typed my message (not a very nice one). On hitting submit, a message came up that my message was improper and could only be about website issues.
It was obvious someone was monitoring the page; had to be. I suspect I wasn’t the first to leave a message that way. Oh, there was a forum one could join, but I didn’t want to go that route. Why bother having a presence on a Stephen King forum? I’ve never read his books, never seen a movie of his.
It figures things have changed in 30 years.
Things have changed considerably in 50 years. My dad was drafted for WWII out of his sophomore year at the Citadel. My F-I-L was a little older, already had his bachelor's degree in English and was a school principal in North Carolina. They both went through OCS. Dad got out of the Reserves as a captain in the 50s because meetings conflicted with church choir. By that time he had a law degree. My F-I-L stayed in and retired as a bird colonel, never did get another degree.
But I am an odd sort of reader, currently I'm pretty much stuck in the 16th century and before. I'm never going to get through all the old stuff in time to get to much modern literature, let alone trashy potboilers like King's. Right now I'm reading C.S. Lewis on Gavin Douglas (b. 1497) the Scots poet and translator of Virgil.
Attack? Isn’t dialog a good thing?
W/o cliches Mr. King would be speechless.
Although there is always the trite, the hackneyed, the formulaic, and of course two dimensional characters.
He worked in a laundry as a kid in high school. If you want insight into King, read his “On Writing,” which many consider a great “how-to” book for writers. King grew up hard and my admiration of him grew after reading “On Writing” because it contains a lot of biographical information. He also writes about the accident that almost killed him (and I don’t know that he’s ever been the same since that accident).
Well, I’m an armchair historian when it comes to the Civil War and the American West, but I do read my share of contemporary novels; the likes of Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, and then stuff by writers like James Patterson, Michael Connelly or Jeffrey Deaver. But these are simply for enjoyment. It’s the history I crave.
Anything like King’s stuff that brings in what I’d call the supernatural is something I avoid. Never have, never will have, any taste for that.
Go live for 3 decades under the brutal, oppressive, and genocidal Hussein Regime, Stevie... and get back to me -- you disrespectful, freedom loving assclown.
You must have a 4-year undergraduate degree to become an officer. You also must have an undergrad degree to continue as a warrant office past the grade of W2. There are a few exceptions. Battlefield promotions used to be common enough, especially back in WWII. The brutal fact of large-scale ground warfare is that lieutenants die very quickly. Sometimes those slots were filled by NCOs getting a battlefield promotion.
As you progress through the officer ranks, graduate education doesn’t matter as much. It does if you want to make O6 (Colonel-Army, Marine Corps, Air Force or Captain in the Navy). You can make O5 with no graduate degree as long as you finish all the required service related schools in each branch, keep your nose clean and do well in your command positions.
I’m a Major (O4) Army-type. If you have any questions, drop me a freepmail.
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