Which ones the best

We don't talk enough about the implications of the annual Thanksgiving presidential turkey pardon

The thing that the turkey is getting pardoned /from/ is being Thanksgiving dinner, the thing the turkey is being pardoned for is a mystery. What are turkeys' crime that gives them the death penalty unless pardoned mr president? Is being a turkey an inherent crime? They were nearly the national bird!

Also, after a turkey attacked a president during the pardon ceremony, the turkeys that will be pardoned in the future are bred and raised to be docile and calm in front of large crowds and next to the potus, indicating that birds can be artificially selected to be genetically capable of being legally freed from their original sin of being born a turkey

I am SO DELIGHTED to inform you that one of The West Wing’s annual-ish Thanksgiving episodes, there was a subplot about the annual turkey pardon which culminated in this iconic scene:

I don't know if you wanted a real answer or not, but here goes, buckle up:

The first unofficially pardoned turkey was actually just a turkey spared in private by President Lincoln in 1863. The bird had been gifted to the president's family for Thanksgiving dinner, but Lincoln's youngest son, Tad, had adopted the bird upon arrival. He asked his father to let the turkey live rather than become their Thanksgiving dinner, and Lincoln obliged. Tad named the bird Jack, and Jack would later be spared from Christmas dinner as well, through the use of a written reprieve note to Tad from his father. In this case, the turkey was spared because he had committed no crimes and a little boy loved him. Heartwarming.

The first public “sparing” of a Presidential Thanksgiving turkey was in 1947, by President Truman. This was not a pardon, but rather part of a lobbying campaign to reduce meat and egg consumption by introducing “meatless mondays” and “poultryless thursdays.” Truman publicly spared the turkeys but there’s no record of it going anywhere alive, and it was most likely not spared in private. This is OFTEN credited as the first “presidential pardon” but that’s just flat out wrong. The birds were not pardoned, pardoning was not a part of it, and likely the birds were not even spared, there was just a public advertising event about eating less/no meat/eggs.

The first non-presidential use of the term “pardoned” in reference to the Presidential Thanksgiving turkey would come later, in 1963, when Kennedy publicly spared his (live) gifted turkey. The press reported that the turkey had been “pardoned” by the president, even though no official presidential pardon had been given. The turkey would outlive Kennedy, who was assassinated 3 days later. Some people count this. I don’t. No crimes were committed here, Kennedy didn’t call it a pardon himself, though the turkey was actually spared.

The first presidential use of the word "pardoned" in reference to the Presidential Thanksgiving turkey was in 1987, as a deflection of Reagan's shady business. Reagan had sent his gifted turkeys to a petting zoo since 1982, but in ‘87, his administration was selling arms to Iran under the guise of rescuing US prisoners, and then using the funds to assist a right-wing terrorist group in Nicaragua (the Contras). During a press conference, when Reagan was being asked whether or not he would pardon two of the national security council members (Oliver North and John Poindexter) involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan deflected by joking that if that year’s (live) Thanksgiving turkey had not already been destined for a petting zoo, he “would have pardoned him,” as if that was a valid answer to the question. Again, no official pardon was issued, but at least crimes were committed, just not by the turkey.

Two years later, in 1989, President Bush would actually go through with the first official, public Presidential pardoning of a turkey. The official quote is: “But let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy—he’s presented a Presidential pardon as of right now.” The turkey was sent to live at a farm, as had been done for spared turkeys in the past. This altered the tradition of sparing a turkey either privately or publicly, and it became pardoning a turkey in a cutesy public event for good PR, despite no crimes having been committed by the turkey.

So, TL;DR: Presidential Thanksgiving turkeys were first spared by Abraham Lincoln, out of love for his son, who had great fondness of the innocent bird. Presidential Thanksgiving turkeys are now pardoned because Ronald Reagan joked about pardoning a turkey as a means of deflecting attention from his administration’s crimes, and George Bush thought a ceremony for publicly pardoning a turkey for crimes it didn’t commit sounded like a good idea.

The answer: The turkeys never committed any crimes, but the humans pardoning them sure weren't innocent.

I feel obligated to point out that this isn't necessarily even the wildest part of the "presidential turkey" nonsense.

Prior to 1873, the turkeys being gifted to the president were live (as near as I can tell). In 1873, a farmer from Rhode Island gifted a dressed turkey to the president, a tradition he would continue for the next 40 years, as the sole donator.

Just before that farmer's death in 1913, another farmer (from Kentucky this time) attempted to horn in on this tradition by presenting a dressed turkey from his own stock, touting that it was better. This seemingly broke the dam, as people realized they could compete for whose bird the president would choose as the best, and floods of people began gifting the president turkeys at thanksgiving. This went on for ten years and culminated in President Coolidge telling the public not to send turkeys.

Now, he said this because it was a ridiculous number of turkeys. However, the general public decided that "don't send turkeys" meant "send other things" and, beginning in 1925, Coolidge began receiving weird animals to eat for thanksgiving.

Including a live racoon.

Whom he named Rebecca, and kept as an official White House Pet.

There is now an official organization responsible for raising the presidential turkey- the National Turkey Federation. Hilariously, this organization, in charge of providing turkeys that are destined not to be eaten, has the website eatturkey.org. Each year they select 50-80 candidates for pardon, and spend months accustoming the birds to crowds, loud noises, and flashing lights, all the while whittling the candidates down to the two best behaved and well-feathered birds.

Less hilariously, they continue to provide broad breasted turkeys for pardon, instead of heritage birds. On the one hand, this "makes sense" as broad breasted birds are the ones being sold as meat birds. However, broad breasted turkeys are a meat turkey and, like meat chickens, face extensive and often painful health conditions if kept alive past their typical butcher age (about 18 weeks), and the pardoned turkeys rarely live past 2 years before needing to be euthanized due to health concerns. They often get immensely overweight (Kennedy's bird weighed 55lbs at the time it was spared, when a healthy tom turkey should weigh more like 15-20lbs. Their size also makes them unable to preen properly, leaving them poorly feathered. Heritage birds, on the other hand, can live upwards of 10 years and are not prone to the same heart problems or joint/muscle issues that stem from the massive overgrowth of muscle. They are able to perform natural turkey behaviors their entire lives. The literal pardon for a broad breasted turkey is actually kind of a damnation to years of being uncomfortable and potentially in pain until it gets bad enough to be euthanized anyway. A symbolic pardon for a heritage bird would mean a potential decade of comfortable life under expert care.

While I should have anticipated it given the “1963,” “The turkey would outlive Kennedy, who was assassinated 3 days later” was still a hell of a tonal lurch.

Don’t think I’ll get around to finishing it but psst DC, make a new Sirens series *slides money across the table*

thinking about the fact that in order to serve on the jury of a death penalty case you have to be willing to impose the death penalty (i.e. not be categorically opposed to it on principle) otherwise you'll be dismissed, so juries in death penalty cases tend to be disproportionately white and male and have been shown to be more likely to vote for conviction. just in general death penalty as a practice is horrific and barbaric but this specific part of it also just feels so insane to me

the girls are fightingggggg [readjusts my glasses, squinting] by god… it appears i was mistaken. they're…my goodness…by god

the traumatized child thing of getting really stressed whenever you have to ask for clarification on something bc you Know the yelling is coming

This is Farah's 'GoFundMe' (she's not that far off from her goal :) ) -

You can clips of the situation people are facing in Ghazza that she's uploaded onto her Instagram handle - farah.n.ammar.

The entity delights in taking away these people's limbs, sight and dignity - the football players, the journalists, just every day humans.

Please boost and raise awareness.

never forget how the mainstream media spread the fake beheaded babies news while completely ignoring the 40,000+ palestinians butchered by israel.

Britain is already one-upping the Wonka scam by making the LEGO Dashcon ballpit real

an extra hour in the brick pit

He deserves it

"If the Israeli assault stopped today, and we decided to hold a funeral every single day for each Palestinian killed in the last eight months, it would take us 100 years to honor them all."

The Palestinian speaker at the UN Security Council highlights the devastating toll of casualties among Palestinians resulting from the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

verified ways to send aid to gaza directly

Help a Palestinian family directly:

Help provide tents (urgent):

Food, cash & essentials:

Water:

eSIMs (urgent):

Medical Aid

Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְה Vi tsu derleb ikh im shoyn tsu bagrobn. [my best translation] Hear Israel (beginning of a prayer in Hebrew) I should outlive him long enough to bury him. (an old Yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

Palestinian activists get their message across on Londons iconic Tower Bridge landmark- one of the cities most historic buildings. We need a ceasefire now.