[AlaskaErik]

The military requires the ability to read texts at and around the 1200 Lexile mark. For those not in the education field, the Lexile measure is a text difficulty score. The measure is based on semantic difficulty and syntactic complexity. 1200, for instance, is the measure of a novel such as War and Peace.

That might be so for officers, but not for enlisted. The Army writes tech and field manuals at the fourth grade level. The great majority of Army enlistees are not going to be able to read War and Peace. I say that as someone with almost 32 years of military service. But going back to King's statement, it was condescending, elitist and typical of the American hating left. Most people who can't read will either spend most of their lives in prison or they'll be flipping burgers at McDonalds.

[RedRover]

I'm sure you're right. I used War and Peace as an example of a 1200 Lexile text. A better example might be the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) which is also at the 1200 Lexile level--same level as the SAT and ACT.

As you say, King had a legitimate point to make. Fluency as a reader is essential to a successful career in any field these days. But being a liberal, he took a swipe at the men and women serving in Iraq rather than the illiterates in prison or on welfare.