LAST WEEK HERE at the Mr. Wrong Column we solved Thanksgiving, and I feel pretty good about that, but there’s this whole other part of Thanksgiving which really annoys me, and it is the annual and stupid Presidential Pardon issued to a Turkey, and a Vice-Turkey.
For example, last year, the President Of The United States of America (POTUS), Joe Biden, addressed the Nation with prepared remarks that were prepared by a Presidential speechwriter at the expense of my Tax Dollars. Here are some chunks of the transcript of the speech, where there’s a buncha people standing around with the POTUS grinning at how hilarious the whole event is, and there’s some actual Turkeys:
THE PRESIDENT: You know, as a University of Delaware man, I’m partial to Blue Hens, but today we’re going to talk turkey.
To the families of my staff, thank you for joining us, for being part of our team.
And thank you, [Phil] Seger, Chairman of the National Turkey Federation, for continuing the tradition of presenting the turkey to the President that goes back to President Truman.
(Turkeys gobble.)
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. (Laughter.) Yes. And pardoning the turkey goes back to George H.W. Bush.
All for laughs, and gobbles! It’s Thanksgiving, and somehow Turkeys have committed some sort of Crime, for which they need to be Pardoned, right? They are convicted, somehow, of being Food!
It’s fucking tacky to be doing “pardons” with all the crap going on with our (as in The U.S.) so-called criminal justice system! Hey, person caught up in the criminal justice system, fuck you, we’re over here “pardoning” dumb animals for laffs! Gobble Gobble!
Meanwhile, I know a lot of people think no animals should be food for people, and I have always said that as soon as I get forced to be vegetabletarian, I will comply, for the good of the Earth, and Carbon Debt and stuff, but until then, as part of the Food Chain, I contend that this is disrespectful to domesticated Turkeys, and their function, this idea of a Pardon, of two Turkeys, once a year, for a photo-op and some chuckles.
Let’s get back to the POTUS:
Look, and a special thanks to the students at Ellie and Jack’s school in Jasper who submitted the names of these two fine turkeys — two names that I couldn’t agree on more. Who better to help celebrate the holiday in which we break the bread for two turkeys named Peanut Butter and Jelly?
They get the children in on it and have them sign off with cute names! Of food! They can’t just be a coupla Turkeys, they are now a dopey PB&J!
So this is coming up again next week, this Turkey Pardon. You know what happens to those turkeys that get “pardoned”? I looked it up on the Internet! They die in about a year because they were agriculturally designed to be perfect for eating right about now (if you eat Turkeys) and then there’s no tomorrow! Study the picture of doomed POTUS John F. Kennedy, and his medically-induced golden tone with that of the weirdly bloated pale Turkey being presented for ridicule! Wild Turkeys—contenders for National Bird before the carrion-feasting Eagle took the slot—don’t look like that, they have color and vibrancy!
Those Turkeys don’t give a crap that they got a pardon, they grow twice as big but not even for half as long! They are made as well as we could make them, but not to last!
Although the National Thanksgiving Turkey and its alternate (sent in case the primary turkey can’t fulfill its duties—mainly, staying alive to make it to the presentation ceremony) now receive stays of execution, their remaining days do not last too long. The skeletons and organs of turkeys bred for consumption are incapable of supporting extreme weights, and most of the reprieved turkeys die prematurely within the following year.
So these turkeys are getting a Pardon from their Purpose, and are condemned to live out the rest of their days beyond their design limits! Does an uneaten turkey dream of an electric carving knife?
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear.
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