Stephen King Apologizes for Making a Political Joke About Lethal Train Wreck

Stephen King Apologizes for Making a Political Joke About Lethal Train Wreck
Stephen King arrives for a press conference dedicated to presenting his new book 'Doctor Sleep' in Paris on Nov. 12, 2013. (Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images)
Chris Jasurek
2/3/2018
Updated:
2/3/2018

Author Stephen King has been a vocal critic of Republican politics, as his Twitter feed reflects.

Even though King’s books are full of evil and gore, death and disaster, and horrible things in general, the author showed that in real life he values life.

When first he heard that a train carrying members of the Republican Party to a conference had collided with a garbage truck on Feb. 1, the award-winning author made a joke.

Almost immediately people commented that this was no laughing matter—one person had died in the collision.

King realized he had inadvertently crossed a line. Twenty minutes after the first tweet, he posted, “Of COURSE sorry the truck driver died.”

As it turned out, the fatality was not the truck driver, but a passenger in the truck who was not traveling with the politicians.

After thinking it over for a few hours, King realized that politicians were people, and the accident was a human tragedy, not an appropriate situation to be attacking politicians, or anybody else.

While it seemed hard for him to say, King even admitted that the members of the Republican delegation, politics non-withstanding, responded as good people—they all got out and did whatever they could to help.

King didn’t seem to want to apologize—but he did, and even offered praise, however grudgingly, to his political opponents.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was among the Republicans on the train, tweeted about the incident himself.

And to wrap up the Twitter activity, Stephen King retweeted a call for help for the fatally injured passenger, Chris Foley, whose co-workers have set up a GoFundMe page to help his family.
Chris Foley and son (GoFundMe)
Chris Foley and son (GoFundMe)

The GoFund Me page says, “Chris lost his life. We here at the company lost a friend and a brother, his one year old son and mother of his child lost a father.”

“We are trying to raise enough for the family to cover funeral cost and help with some living costs.”

From NTD.tv
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