Author Topic: Meatless Mondays, Oliver North and our Long, Bizarre Tradition of Pardoning Thanksgiving Turkeys  (Read 3429 times)

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Offline jmyrlefuller

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On November 21, President Donald Trump is set to pardon a 47-pound and 36-pound pair of live turkeys from Alexandria, Minnesota and send them to live out their natural lives in the care of trained hands. It's been a tradition since the 1980s, but the long and sordid history of America's national Thanksgiving turkey presentation goes back many more decades than that.

First, for all of the history behind our Thanksgiving holiday, it's notable that it has only been an institutionalized holiday in the United States since the Civil War. It was not long after that that Henry Vose (some sources say Horace Vose), a prominent Rhode Island turkey farmer, began presenting a turkey to the sitting President of the United States. Vose presented his first turkey to then-President Ulysses Grant in 1873 and continued the tradition through succeeding Presidents until his death in 1913; when he died, other people and civic organizations continued the tradition. In 1926, Calvin Coolidge, who received a number of different animals as food gifts for reasons unknown, received (of all things) a live raccoon intended for Thanksgiving dinner. Coolidge turned the gift into a pet.

In the autumn of 1947, with World War II over, President Harry Truman was raising support for a recovery campaign for the German and Japanese states, hoping to avoid the mistakes of the World War I aftermath. One of those was a drive to conserve grain for the effort; to do this, he decided to try and divert some of the grain being raised as animal feed and encourage two days of the week for reduced animal product usage, believing that, since Americans were already accustomed to rationing from World War II, they would accept it as a patriotic duty. Tuesdays would be "Meatless Tuesdays" (reviving the World War I concept that followed a similar concept to the later "Meatless Mondays") and Thursdays would be "Poultryless Thursdays." Compliance was voluntary, but Americans were encouraged not to eat meat or pork on Tuesdays, while chicken, turkey and eggs were taboo on Thursdays. (Wednesdays were also designated "Wasteless Wednesdays," a slightly more ambiguous day that simply encouraged people not to prepare more food than they ate; it replaced the more explicit "Wheatless Wednesdays" of World War I.)

At first, compliance was fairly strong: many restaurants were more than willing to comply with the regulations when they began October 7. Within two weeks, however, complaints from customers, as well as restaurants who found themselves severely constrained by the restrictions (breakfast in particular was made difficult without eggs on Thursday or ham, sausage or bacon on Tuesdays) led to public abandonment of the proposal. The National Poultry and Egg Board, at the time the poultry industry's chief lobbying arm, was incensed at the attack on their industry and noted two major pitfalls in the Truman administration's plan: first, Thanksgiving was always on a Thursday, meaning that two major holiday staples—pumpkin pie (which contained eggs) and the turkey itself—were going to be on the banned foods list; second, Americans might have been more willing to forgo the poultry for one Thanksgiving if they could have it for Christmas, but that too was on a Thursday in 1947, as was the following New Year's Day of 1948.

A fierce lobbying campaign ensued, including a "Hens for Harry" stunt that sent live hens to the White House. Shortly before Thanksgiving, a truce was called: Truman agreed to remove turkey from the discouraged foods list, leaving the day only as "Eggless Thursdays" for the rest of the year (meaning pumpkin pie was still out of the question). A public ceremony was held at the White House that year, and thus began a national tradition: the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. While some popular rumors attribute the start of the turkey pardoning tradition to these early ceremonies, that part of the presentation did not come until later; Truman ate the turkeys presented to him. (Truman, by the way, did reach his goal for extra grain, with or without the cooperation.)


Truman, making amends with an industry he angered, accepted turkeys (including this one in 1949), each year for the rest of his Presidency.

Succeeding Presidents after Truman varied on what they did with the turkeys presented to them. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford are believed to have eaten their turkeys, while John Kennedy and Richard Nixon spared at least some of them. Jimmy Carter (who apparently did not celebrate Thanksgiving) curiously refused to accept any turkeys or attend the presentations, leaving his First Lady, Rosalyn, to attend the ceremonies. Kennedy's 1963 turkey was particularly noted for its massive size: at 55 pounds, the Broad Breasted White was huge even by Presidential turkey standards, and Kennedy decided not to eat it, sending it back to the farm. The newspapers of the time called the reprieve a "pardon;" Kennedy did not refer to it as such, and the terminology still didn't catch on. Four days after the reprieve, Kennedy himself was dead.

President Ronald Reagan had made it a tradition to send his turkeys to farms and petting zoos instead of having them slaughtered for Thanksgiving dinner. It was the 1987 presentation of a turkey named Charlie that is believed to be the modern origin of the turkey pardon. Reagan was embroiled in the Iran-Contra Affair at the time, and a reporter tried to intrude upon the ceremony by asking Reagan if he would consider pardoning Oliver North, a figure in the affair who had yet to be tried. Reagan, having none of the hijacking, quipped: "If they'd given me a different answer about Charlie and his future, I would have pardoned him."


Charlie was amused, anyway.

When George H.W. Bush took office in 1989, he continued Reagan's tradition of sparing his Thanksgiving turkeys. He initially was indifferent about what it would be called, noting: "It's all the same for the turkey, as long as he doesn't end up on the president's holiday table." Nevertheless, the notion of a Presidential pardon for the turkey had stuck by this point, and Bush, along with successors Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, have now incorporated a mock pardon into each ceremony, complete with topical jokes and puns.

For many years, the pardoned turkeys were deliberate tourist attractions, being sent to theme parks such as Disneyland, Mount Vernon and Frying Pan Farm Park to live out their lives. This posed a problem, as farmed turkeys are not bred to live long lives; most of the pardoned turkeys were dying within a year of their reprieve. One was suspiciously euthanized right before the next Thanksgiving. Beginning in 2013, the turkeys were sent to Turkey Hill Farm at Morven Park, the estate of former Virginia Governor Westmoreland Davis; that facility was better equipped to raise turkeys than previous "forever homes," and since that time, the turkeys have generally lived to at least two years old. Since 2016, Virginia Tech's poultry science program has hosted the pardoned turkeys.


A turkey and a lame duck: George W. Bush's last turkey pardon in 2008.

So we arrive here, in 2017, and the turkey pardon, a quirky, jocular Thanksgiving tradition, is now an American institution—one that shows our ability not to take our actual institutions too seriously.
Sources:
https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/the-way-we-ate-the-year-harry-truman-passed-on-pumpkin-pie/
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/pardoning-the-thanksgiving-turkey
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/20/AR2007112002331_pf.html
https://nypost.com/2016/11/20/the-turkey-pardoning-tradition-may-have-started-with-a-raccoon/
« Last Edit: November 20, 2017, 10:43:44 pm by jmyrlefuller »
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Offline Frank Cannon

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So a Commie started this stupidity to see if he could try and control the country after an emergency. Donny should pull out 2 pearl handled .357s and blow the turkeys away instead of pardoning them just on principle.

Offline RoosGirl

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So a Commie started this stupidity to see if he could try and control the country after an emergency. Donny should pull out 2 pearl handled .357s and blow the turkeys away instead of pardoning them just on principle.

Turkey hunting is typically done with shotguns.  However, I know a guy who has a very nice mount in his dining room of one he took with a .22 rifle shot to the head.

Here at Roos Ranch we are pardoning a turkey, but the cow that our brisket is coming from is displeased.