Under normal circumstances, the author Stephen King should have been feeling pretty good about things and himself at the moment. The latest film of one of his works, Francis Lawrence\u2019s horror-thriller The Long Walk, opened in American cinemas this weekend and has been met with almost unanimously rave reviews, many of which have called it a more socially aware, darker Hunger Games. He recently published a Maurice Sendak-illustrated retelling of Hansel and Gretel, which brings his trademark dark and macabre sensibilities to the age-old fairytale. And his last novel, Never Flinch, was, naturally, a bestseller \u2013 as all his books have been since he first published Carrie, over half a century ago in 1974.<\/p>\n
So it says quite a lot for the 77-year-old King that, for absolutely no reason, he decided to offer his opinions about the Charlie Kirk saga. King\u2019s first reaction to Kirk\u2019s assassination was to call it \u201canother example of American gun violence\u201d and to echo Barack Obama\u2019s comments that \u201cthis kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.\u201d All perfectly normal and (relatively) uncontroversial. And then King decided to say of the recently murdered Kirk that \u201che advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The activist had, of course, said nothing of the kind, and King swiftly deleted his tweet and has spent much of the day of his new film\u2019s release apologizing to various public figures who reacted in outrage his comments, most notably Ted Cruz, who called him \u201ca horrible, evil, twisted liar\u201d and asked ,\u201cWhy are you so dishonest & filled with hate?\u201d King, presumably through gritted teeth, wrote \u201cThe horrible, evil, twisted liar apologizes. This is what I get for reading something on Twitter [sic] w\/o fact-checking. Won\u2019t happen again.\u201d Yet the reputational damage has already been done. Admittedly, the author has never been remotely shy about his Democratic, pro-Palestinian sympathies, which have never endeared him to the MAGA crowd, but if The Long Crowd underperforms this weekend, especially with viewers in the heartland where the film is set, fingers will undoubtedly be pointed in King\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n
Not, of course, that it will make any existential difference to the writer\u2019s popularity. He has been involved in many other high-profile spats, not least when he dismissed James Patterson, saying of his fellow author, \u201cI don\u2019t like him, I don\u2019t respect his books because everyone is the same,\u201d and remarked of Stephenie Meyer, who was unfavorably compared to JK Rowling, that she \u201ccan\u2019t write worth a darn. She\u2019s not very good.\u201d Rowling, of course, came in for her own implied criticism, when an X user asked King what he thought of her political stances, and he replied, \u201cTrans women are women.\u201d And although most people believe Stanley Kubrick\u2019s adaptation of The Shining to be a classic of the horror genre and an improvement on the scary but schlocky book, King has always despised it, calling it \u201ca film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reverse might be said of King himself. His willingness to take to social media and share his opinions, interact with his millions of admirers and discuss matters wholly unrelated to his books is commendable, and there is a reason why he has 6.8 million followers. Yet as his timely dystopian picture arrives in cinemas to shock and provoke audiences, even those who might be well disposed toward this ornery, ever-controversial author might hope that he\u2019ll engage his considerable intellect before pressing \u201csend\u201d next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under normal circumstances, the author Stephen King should have been feeling pretty good about things and himself at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[62645,1326,61370,62646,96,8356,59,39033,224,15064,62647,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-133499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-assassination","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-charlie-kirk","11":"tag-charlie-kirk-assassination","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-film-reviews","14":"tag-gb","15":"tag-jk-rowling","16":"tag-social-media","17":"tag-stephen-king","18":"tag-ted-cruz","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}