Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Stephen King is an idiot
Last month, novelist Stephen King - who hasn't written an interesting book since about 1985 - told a group of students that the U.S. military is full of illiterate fools. News Busters exposed King's comments, and King ain't too happy 'bout the, well, exposing. Here's what he said last month:
"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."
King's shipdittery is essentially a repeat of John Kerry's infamous gaffe during the 2006 congressional election:
"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Back in '06, the Heritage Foundation did a masterful job debunking Kerry's U.S.-soldiers-aren't-too-bright comments in a study full of facts and figures. Methinks Steven King needs to read up on it.
"[T]he additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers.
"Recruits have a higher percentage of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. ...
"The previous study noted the significant difference between the national recruit high school graduation rate of 98 percent and the national youth graduation rate of 75 percent."
"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."
King's shipdittery is essentially a repeat of John Kerry's infamous gaffe during the 2006 congressional election:
"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Back in '06, the Heritage Foundation did a masterful job debunking Kerry's U.S.-soldiers-aren't-too-bright comments in a study full of facts and figures. Methinks Steven King needs to read up on it.
"[T]he additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers.
"Recruits have a higher percentage of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. ...
"The previous study noted the significant difference between the national recruit high school graduation rate of 98 percent and the national youth graduation rate of 75 percent."
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Tuesday, May 06, 2008 
