Remember shortly before Election Day 2006 when Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) suggested that if you don’t get a good education, “you get stuck in Iraq”?
Apparently to author Stephen King if you don’t know how to read your only choice is to join the Army and go to Iraq.
According to published reports, last month Stephen King was speaking in front of a group of high school students at the Library of Congress when he said the following:
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.
So, according to Mr. King, if you can’t read then you are doomed to a failed life of serving this country in the Armed Services. The obvious implication is that our military is populated by ignorant people that cannot read.
Currently the US Army has a higher literacy rate than the population at large. Every officer in the United States military has a degree.
During the ensuing firestorm over such rude comments King has responded:
I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so.
What must have seemed like a clarification to Mr. King was just salt on the wound. Here he implies that there are way better jobs than serving with nobility in the US military.
Try telling that to my son, a US Marine than has already served in Afghanistan and is getting ready to deploy to Iraq, Mr. King.
