Posted on 05/12/2008 5:34:44 AM PDT by moneyrunner
Horror novelist Stephen King talking to High School students had this to say about literacy:
"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."
Now literacy is critically important and I applaud efforts to get people to read. But it’s the example he uses that is offensive. He assumes that people who go into the military do so because they have no other choices and because they are illiterate. This is clearly not true.
If you want to find illiterates, visit the prisons. Interview single moms in the ghetto. Check the hamburger flippers at the fast food joints.
Rather than apologizing, he struck back.
(Excerpt) Read more at moneyrunner.blogspot.com ...
And yes, I question his patriotism.
Stephen King is a snob. And most snobs I’ve met have two things in common: They’re out of touch and they’re rude.
mr. king, meet ms. fonda.
The fact is if you have freedom of expression, can read what you want and say what you want later on. If you don't, then you live in country that didn't have 100,000's of soldiers that died protecting your freedom.
It’s a common meme of the left that the military is staffed by ignorant cavemen.
King and Kerry are just keeping an ancient tradition alive.
You articulated the fallacies with/illogical nature of Mr. King’s reaction to the outrage over his statements quite nicely, thanks. In this particular case, Mr. King seems to have contracted the same disease that Rosie O’Donnell has in that he seems to be incapable of self-critique and admitting his mistakes.
I thought most booger-eating social rejects try to write fantasy books, not join the Army.
That having been said, I think that his comments show the contempt that he (and other NE liberals) have for the military. All of their protests to the contrary notwithstanding, the average Northeastern Liberal thinks that soliders are little more than trained apes.
It also shows how insulated Mr. King is from the real world. My old High School was just a couple of miles from Mr. King's home in Bangor. Better than a third of my senior class went into the military. Go Figure.
I will rise in defense of King.
People are allowed to be wrong. He almost certainly doesn’t understand that the military academies are more difficult to get into than Harvard, both academically and in the broader sense.
King is a philanthropist. This is VERY rare among hard core liberals. He gives money away often and in large magnitude, and he generally does so to non political charities. He is not enormously rich because of this generosity — and it’s not all pouring money down 3rd world ratholes. He built a baseball stadium for his local high school.
Sending him examples of military PhD’s is a wiser response than political attack. He’s a rational man and he’s shares another quality with conservatives that you don’t often find in liberals — he’s a very hard worker.
Stephen King should read Tom Clancy.
He built a baseball stadium for his local high school. A nice ballpark, IMHO. I liked the three million dollar "anonymous" donation to the Bangor Public Library during their renovation.
I firmly believe that charity begins at home. You're absolutely right - Mr. King takes care of his own, and does it without posing for all of the cameras. He's an excellent philanthropist, and the entertainment community would be well served by following his lead in this regard. His opinions aside, he deserves credit for the good that he does for Northern Maine.
What do you expect from a draft dodger?
Exactly. They believe that the real intellectual heavy lifting is done by gender challenged latte sippers taking liberal arts courses.
Another hollywood hack needing attention.
Proves his ignorance just by opening his mouth. Doesn’t know squat about the military, its members or their families. He should be so lucky to have been a part of the military services. He might have learned something about real heroes who protect sorry butts like his.
The bastards deny their attitude toward the military,
but sometimes some of them slip and let loose with something revealing the attitudes they spout in their lefthanded circlejerks.
By the way, what do you know of his financial status? Here's something from his biography:
"Stephen King's latest literary deal calls for him to be paid $35 million for 4 books, a solid financial testament to his popularity. As his novels are quickly snapped up by producers for feature films and TV movies, King shares the wealth: He spent $1 million to build a baseball stadium for the teenagers of Bangor, Maine."
Let's see, earn $35 million, give Bangor a $1 million tax deductible contribution and what do you have left?
Here’s why Stephen King sucks, (and keep in mind, he used to be my favorite author, before I grew up and got wiser)...and by the way, I’m lieutenant colonel who’s served in the Army for 27 years now:
1. He’s not only godless, but consistently creates antagonists of the Christian faith that are mindless zealots, thus discouraging people away from Christ. (Carrie, the Mist) The inspiration behind “The Green Mile,” and you have to read the book, not just watch the movie, was a way to explain how Jesus might not have been God, but just another human with special powers like John Coffey. This is a huge sin that will land him in hot water on judgment day if he doesn’t change his ways.
2. He’s slothful. Most of his protagonists are artists or authors, like himself. Why? Because he’s too lazy to research other walks of life. Even when he writes from a writer’s point of view, he doesn’t do proper research. Tommyknockers: “Buffalo soldiers” didn’t live off the buffalo, Stephen, they were black.
3. He’s megalomaniacal and sexually perverted: His story about the poor maid who had to eat a penis-shaped mushroom and eat the semen off of a famous writer’s hotel bedsheets in order to pass on talent to her unborn son; the group sex of the boys and girl both as children and adults in “It,” and the list goes on. Yes, Stephen, if we all just have wild, unbridled sex with little girls it’ll steel us for the final confrontation with evil creatures, and if we just fall down and worship you and ingest your bodily fluids, we too can achieve talent. Give me a break.
4. He’s irresponsible, fearful and clueless (i.e., a liberal): This is the standard reason that people become anti-conservative-government, paranoid radicals, which he clearly is. It’s typical of someone who comes from the northeast and stayed in university too long, instead of venturing out into the big, scary real world. Thus many of his works exhibit notions of government as hypercompetent, dangerous, and conspiratorial (Firestarter, The Dead Zone, which happens to be my favorite, and The Stand)
If you’re an adolescent or intellectual equivalent of one, and if you don’t care about truth, morality, or the Christian faith, you’ll likely be a fan. But then hopefully you gain wisdom and outgrow this tripe.
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