Jessica

Vozel

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November 24, 2008

Sarah Palin and Thanksgiving Dinner Reconsidered

This weekend, Saturday Night Live did a Thanksgiving-themed skit, dressing their cast as panicked, top-heavy turkeys running through the woods with gunfire echoing at their backs. I was certain we’d see one more Tina-Fey-as-Sarah-Palin cameo as part of that skit, with Fey mimicking Sarah Palin’s now infamous turkey farm interview. But it appears Fey’s temporary SNL contract is up.

In case you haven’t heard, Palin recently visited a Wasilla turkey farm to pardon one of their fowl, and afterwards conducted an interview complete with on-camera turkey slaughter behind her oblivious back. Palin’s utter lack of awareness – or compassion, if she was in fact aware but unconcerned – is more comical now that she’s not a heartbeat away from leading America. But I still find it difficult to laugh. Bear with me.

Around this time of the year, it becomes fashionable to joke about turkeys. “What does a turkey eat for Thanksgiving?” “Nothing – he’s already stuffed!” “What side of the turkey is the left side?” “The side that’s not eaten!” We see cartoons of turkeys with pleading eyes, holding up signs that say “Eat Fish Instead” and turkeys inside of ovens, wearing sunglasses and relaxing on a beach towel, only to be cooked alive in the next slide. The impulse to joke is at least somewhat reflexive of the fact that we realize what Thanksgiving means for turkeys. That our elected officials carry out the wacky ritual of pardoning a turkey is itself an acknowledgement that every year thousands of turkeys die in the name of tradition. Except, unlike with the other pardoning our presidents do as they leave office, the pardoned here are innocent.

There’s a lot wrong with mass animal slaughter. It’s not a painless process. In fact, as the Sarah Palin interview debacle showed, it’s a gruesome, bloody process. But the time before the slaughter is no better – turkeys are kept in close quarters without room to flap their feathers, let alone perform their instinctual behaviors of preening, taking dust baths, building nests and roosting. Given these conditions, the pardoned turkeys may be the unlucky ones.

Turkeys are not the dumb, clucking creatures seen in cartoons. They may not speak English or fetch you your slippers, but they are complex, aware, intelligent creatures with keen survival instincts. Additionally, the terrible conditions turkeys – and all other factory farmed-animals – are subjected to require that they be injected with antibiotics to stave off disease, and the competitive market has made growth hormone injections the norm for turkey farmers. These hormones make the animals so disproportionately heavy, their legs often break under the weight.

There are real consequences for humans, too. The American Medical Association backed a bill in 2007 that aimed to reduce or eliminate the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture due to dangers of increased antibiotic resistance. And there’s the matter of all of that excrement without plumbing systems to carry it away, of the acres and acres of land needed to produce enough grain and soy to feed the birds, of the dangers inherent in animal slaughter for the human handlers.

No other animal, vegetable or mineral carries the symbolic tradition of the Thanksgiving turkey. It has come to represent family, togetherness, the impending holidays, even American pride – so much so that, on Thanksgiving, collections are taken for the economically disadvantaged so that they can have not winter coats or blankets or economical canned foods but turkeys.

The smell of turkey flesh even reminds me, someone who has skipped out on turkey for the last four Thanksgivings, of warm family memories. It doesn’t take me long to remember the plight of the once-living creature roasting in the oven, but I understand the reluctance of others to do the same. There are tasty, meatless alternatives out there – Tofurkeys, Celebration Roasts, etc., but if you must eat the bird, at least consider what the animal went through to get to your plate.

While people make jokes about the turkey’s misfortune this time of year, create cute drawings of still-living turkeys using the outlines of our hands, laugh at skits with humans dressed as turkeys and bizarrely pardon a few birds in a gesture of fake compassion, they forget the gruesomeness behind the jokes and tradition. Ironically, it took what was literally going on behind the joke that is Sarah Palin for us to get a glimpse of the truth.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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