Thoughts on turkey and justice
Nov. 23rd, 2011 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoI have these thoughts every year around this time. This year I decided to share them. Lucky you.
So the PotUS pardons a turkey every year. Presumably it was convicted of the heinous crime of.... being extremely tasty or something. We hope it's learned a valuable lesson and will now re-enter society and not be tasty any more. Otherwise the cops will come to its coop and haul it away again and Obama will make that "I am disappoint" face. And nobody wants that.
But really the meat of this treatise is the aftermath. Because you know that the White House does not go vegetarian tomorrow just because their chosen source of protein got a reprieve. Do they go to the maximum security peniturkey and find some tattooed poultry in a sleeveless orange jumpsuit on death row to replace him? (After a drug test, of course.) Do they go out and arrest a pig on trumped up charges and rush him through trial so they can turn him into 24 hour ham?
And does the President only get to eat animals who have been convicted of a crime that warrants the death penalty? Is this why the courts are so slow and clogged up? Do the yams need to also be convicted murderers? Or maybe they've committed treason? Or is it just the carnivorous factions of the meal? And what about mincemeat? It says it's meat but I don't think there's any animals in there.
And at the heart, why stir up this bullshit political theater about pardoning an animal who hasn't committed a crime, and who you decided to put in the crosshairs just to show your benevolence by *not* eating it after all?
So the PotUS pardons a turkey every year. Presumably it was convicted of the heinous crime of.... being extremely tasty or something. We hope it's learned a valuable lesson and will now re-enter society and not be tasty any more. Otherwise the cops will come to its coop and haul it away again and Obama will make that "I am disappoint" face. And nobody wants that.
But really the meat of this treatise is the aftermath. Because you know that the White House does not go vegetarian tomorrow just because their chosen source of protein got a reprieve. Do they go to the maximum security peniturkey and find some tattooed poultry in a sleeveless orange jumpsuit on death row to replace him? (After a drug test, of course.) Do they go out and arrest a pig on trumped up charges and rush him through trial so they can turn him into 24 hour ham?
And does the President only get to eat animals who have been convicted of a crime that warrants the death penalty? Is this why the courts are so slow and clogged up? Do the yams need to also be convicted murderers? Or maybe they've committed treason? Or is it just the carnivorous factions of the meal? And what about mincemeat? It says it's meat but I don't think there's any animals in there.
And at the heart, why stir up this bullshit political theater about pardoning an animal who hasn't committed a crime, and who you decided to put in the crosshairs just to show your benevolence by *not* eating it after all?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 05:54 pm (UTC)I only saved the two, and from here on I have to get more blasphemous.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 12:11 am (UTC)But back to the subject - I think I would posit that death is only a punishment for those who have enough of a neocortex to anticipate it. I don't think a turkey really knows that it's been pardoned and would only be alarmed if the threat of becoming dinner was apparent to them.
I might even endorse the idea that it's only really a punishment for the sort of narcissist that finds themself incarcerated as a result of their lack of concern with their fellow beings. Too bad Sarbanes–Oxley doesn't include a death penalty. Then again, we aren't using it as is.