View from the North 40: Pardon me, turkey

The president officially pardoned the turkey again this year, but really, a is that all about? Isn’t it weird to project a sense of humanity onto the animal we traditionally eat this holiday?

Still, year after year, presidents have been issuing official pardons to turkeys that haven’t done a dang thing wrong. Shouldn’t it be called a stay of execution? Even saying they were saved from a lynching would be more accurate than being pardoned.

Not only have those turkeys done no wrong, they were actually bred and trained by the National Turkey Federation to be well-behaved, even with the travel to the big city, overnight stay in a fancy hotel, crush of media and camera flashes. And I don’t have proof, but I think they are actually trained to gobble on command.

What is there in these turkeys’ lives to pardon? Generations of National Turkey Federation breeders have culled aggressive turkeys from the flock, and any hatchlings destined to be of the proper age and size at Thanksgiving grow up with lots of activity, loud music, lots of handling and show-type training. The turkeys that didn’t make muster along the way were culled until there are two elite turkeys ready to accept the official pardon with grace and charm.

The whole process is a strange combination of the ancient Greek Spartan warrior upbringing, the tiny-tot to Miss America pageant system and old MacDonald’s Farm rolled into one.

If they want to make that pardon mean something, presidents should be rustling up some half-wild turkey raised on kitchen scraps and insects, a turkey that thinks chasing crying children through the barnyard is just a good day’s work. Pardon the turkey that’s raising a ruckus in the Rose Garden and trying to peck out your favorite eyeball, and then I’ll take it seriously.

Also, why are the turkeys white? And, no, don’t anyone roll your eyes thinking “oh, now we’re extending that white-privilege hoo-haw to turkeys.”

This isn’t a black, bronze, chocolate, chestnut red or blue-gray turkey lives matter thing. I’m just saying that the original 1621 feast between the European Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag Indians of the area — the feast that inspired Sarah Josepha Hale to push for the thanks-giving holiday in the mid-1800s — that feast would’ve served eastern wild turkeys.

As a side note, records kept at the colony indicate that they probably ate more seafood than turkey at that meal, but in fairness to Hale's efforts to endorse our modern turkey-based Thanksgiving meal, it would be really hard, anatomically speaking, to stuff a lobster.

Still, if presidents want to honor that first thanks-giving feast by pardoning a turkey that didn’t do anything wrong except be born of the wrong fowl persuasion, then might I suggest a heritage breed of turkey domesticated from the wild turkey of the colonial America days. Perhaps a Bronze turkey or a Norfolk turkey would better play the roll of popular 1621 sacrificial fowl.

While everybody agrees that the Thanksgiving Day holiday is inspired by that feast 400 years ago, a lot of disagreement exists on who to credit with the modern presidential turkey pardoning ceremony. More than a few presidents have given turkeys a stay of execution, get set loose free card or a parole of some degree or another since President Abraham Lincoln issued the first Thanksgiving Day proclamation in 1863.

Plenty of presidents have been presented turkeys in the past, but the Constitution Center website says that George H.W. Bush is the first president to have the official pardoning ceremony. Presidents before that sometimes pardoned the turkey and sometimes they "received" the turkey. Receiving, of course, meant accepting a gift to be cooked for the presidential dinner.

Aside from the fact that only one of the two birds brought to the pardoning ceremony is officially pardoned into early retirement and the other turkey, the understudy if you will, is just given the equivalent of a pinky swear that he won't be ushered into a roasting pan right after the ceremony, is the fact that their retirement will be short lived. Literally.

Turkeys only live about four, maybe five, years.

While that retirement makes a difference to that turkey, if we’re looking for grand gestures we should maybe look to another 1621 tradition of serving seafood and chose to pardon a lobster.

Lobsters can live for 100 years.

That seems like a lot more bang for my taxpayer buck, plus I could enjoy my turkey guilt-free if I knew it wasn't some poor schmuck who flunked out of turkey etiquette and character school.

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To be honest, though, any guilt I feel has a shorter lifespan than my meal at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .