Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Stephen King's Comments

King was trying to make a point about the importance of reading in one's life when he said:
"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, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that."

This has been compared to a statement made by John Kerry back in 2006 in which he said, "You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t you get stuck in Iraq.”

While I can understand people being against the war, either on total principle of an anti-war stance, or our current conflict in Iraq alone, I cannot understand how these two standout personalities can say such things and sleep at night.
It's one thing to insult our government and its way of operating, but to insinuate that the men and women of our country, whose demographic has one of the highest education rates in our country (average 13 1/2 years education), are either stupid, illiterate, or otherwise mentally deficient is an outrage. You find most conservative bloggers jumping all over this issue (present company included), while liberal bloggers and pundits scramble to find a reason as to why these statements are not insulting opinions, but indisputable facts, and that their statements could not possibly be offensive. So, politically speaking this has become a left-right issue. It really shouldn't be an issue of left vs. right.
You have the left who seem to be against anything relating to war or the military. This is evident in Berkley, where the city council moved to push recruiting stations out of the community, likening its offensiveness to that of less than moral establishments like porn shops and gentelmen's clubs. Protests and outright harassment of recruiting staff merely trying to show up to work. Shift to New York, where they literally bombed a recruiting depot. And across the country, barring recruiters from coming into schools to inform students of potential military options, while insisting on passing out birth control to kids as early as age 11, and stating a minor's right to get abortions with or without parental knowledge or consent. The left...the liberals that advocate for being open minded to ALL ideas, yet do their best to suppress anything that goes against the grain of their ideology.

Not only the war is being protested and spoken against en mass, but now we have politicians and novel-writers publicly smearing the likes of those who are brave enough to serve our country in time of peace or war? And by the majority, from people who aren't civic minded enough, nor brave enough to be willing to defend our freedoms themselves. Now Kerry served his country, and despite the rumors surrounding his service, he still served and I applaud that. I applaud King, arguably the greatest novel writer of our time, for his efforts to promote reading and education. But to publicize their political views in connection with this method is outright stupid. It merely shows that being educated doesn't necessarily make you smart, or cause you to possess common sense. It also doesn't provide you with a certain set of principles, that have obviously been instilled in our soldiers.
The likes of King and Kerry, and many others surely take advantage of all that the American Dream offer, as they should. Our soldiers however feel a responsibility to uphold the ability for everyone here to do the same.

3 comments:

All In said...

Love your comments. I couldn't agree more.

Anonymous said...

Amen to the above. I very much agree with the importance of the ability to read, but to equate the military with illiteracy is just obtuse. And i even like his books

Anonymous said...

Great Comments!