Hey Americans. Quick question. Why do turkeys need pardons?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Thanksgiving. If you’re going to celebrate anything nationally it might as well be that. I’m just wondering why every year the President pardons a turkey. What have the turkeys done?
I mean, by implication, all the turkeys are criminals (worthy of the death penalty no less) and in some sort of hazy tradition, each year, one single bird gets forgiven and allowed to live out its days in a turkey sanctuary… while all the rest are sentenced to the chop. But for what?
It’s the first turkey I feel sorry for. Before that, the turkeys probably roamed Virginia without too much of a trouble. Then one gets strung up by some hungry colonists and it’s open season on the rest. Farmed and fed from field to table, imprisoned for a purpose - slaves to the scrawny Brits at Jamestown, who are a) ever so thankful, for some reason, and b) very hungry.
But it’s not the turkeys’ fault is it? I mean they weren’t holding back the harvest! If anything they were chubby little bystanders to the human drama of American settlers in a new world. Seems a bit unfair to drag them into the story and then condescend to offer one of them a pardon for what… being delicious?
So yesterday the current President in his own unique way pardoned yet another turkey, implicitly recognising that millions of innocent unpardoned turkeys - in fact, almost every other turkey in the land - were each heading for family dinners as a result of their terrible crimes.
If you’re going to pardon one turkey, America, come on… you might as well pardon them all. I’m no vegetarian activist, but that has to be the logic, no? Unless every year the White House miraculously finds the one turkey in the USA who’s been wrongly accused of something, and actually deserves a pardon? That is what that system is for… right?
Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment