Weird Wednesday: “Pardon me?”
One of the weirdest duties of the US president is the annual turkey pardon. Since 1870, turkeys have been presented to sitting presidents from citizens and businesses as gifts—not bribes, of course—and were traditionally slaughtered and eaten my the administrations.
It wasn’t until John F. Kennedy jokingly spared his gift from that fate by saying, “we’ll let this one grow.” four days before his assassination, leading to the theory that he had pissed off the turkey grower’s association.
The first official pardon was signed by Ronald Regan when he pardoned the turkeys “Robust” and “Juicy”, which also ushered in the tradition of giving them funny names:
Biscuits and GravyMarshmallow and YamFlyer and FryerCobbler and GobblerCheese and MacTater and TotAs you might tell, this tradition is meant to be light-hearted. President Obama said in 2016: “I want to take a moment to recognize the brave turkeys who weren’t so lucky. Who didn’t get to ride the gravy train to freedom. Who met their fate with courage and sacrifice and proved that they weren’t chicken.”
During a rather cold ceremony in 2022, President Biden said he would keep the ceremony brief because, “Nobody likes it when their turkey gets cold”.
So leave it to Donald Trump to turn it into an opportunity to attack his opponents and detractors in a 40 minute rant and ramble where he called Illinois governor J.D. Prisker a “fat slob”, said he was going to call the turkeys “Chuck” and “Nancy” but that he would never pardon them, and then declaring Biden’s turkey pardons invalid, citing his favorite obsession, the auto-pen.
He then stated that the birds had been “fattened on a steady diet of grass beef to allow the smoothies and all of the other things that they’ve been eating for this occasion,” and true to form he also declared that the turkeys “Gobble” and “Waddle” were the biggest turkeys ever pardoned:“They’re like record-setting. I’ve never seen a turkey that big before.”
Not surprising from the president who sold sponsorships to the Easter Egg Roll at the White House earlier this year.
-Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words, and his latest sci-fi mystery, Euphrates Vanished.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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