Talkin Turkey: The Sarah Palin Turkey Slaughter Incident

by Blue Stockings | Palin is interviewed. Turkeys are slaughtered in the background. I'm just not sure how to interpret that. Or rather, I can't improve on HuffPost.

Some videos you just have to see to believe. On Thursday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared in Wasilla in order to pardon a local turkey in anticipation of Thanksgiving. This proved to be a slightly absurd but ultimately unremarkable event. But what came next was positively surreal. After the pardon Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while the turkeys were being SLAUGHTERED in the background!! Seemingly oblivious to the gruesomeness going on over her shoulder, she carries on talking for over three minutes. Watch the video below to see for yourself. Be warned, it's kind of gruesome.

Yeah, it is. But maybe it will do people good to see where their food comes from?

  Anyway, there it is.  I'm waiting for some Princess Sparkle Pony severed hand turkeys.  I loves me some hand turkeys.

Some people are  more offended than I was.  Yeah, it's gross and cruel, but maybe people need to come to terms with where that big Thanksgiving dinner comes from.  I favor an approach similar to more "primitive" and less barbaric cultures that recognize the sacrifice of a life as something deserving thanks---if you're going to eat meat, deal.  I know this isn't a popular point of view.

Bruce Friedrich at HuffPost points out the top 10 reasons why you too should pardon a turkey this Thanksgiving.  Read 'em and weep.  Literally.  The 10th is that if you wouldn't eat your cat, you shouldn't eat a turkey. 

Anyhow, my view ain't going to be popular, so here's Michael Stickings expressing very well the other one:

How ironic. She's such an animal lover, but the only thing she loves is killing them. And don't think she doesn't -- remember that prank call from a couple of Montreal DJs pretending to be Sarkozy? "Sarkozy" told her he hoped to go hunting with her, perhaps even to hunt from helicopters. She actually laughed when "Sarkozy" said he loves "killing those animals" ("take away a life, that is so fun"). Sure, she may have been laughing out of awkwardness, at least in part, but she obviously likes killing.

It's no surprise that Palin lacks a sense of irony and no surprise that she okayed the backdrop to her interview. I suppose in-your-face, blood-and-guts slaughter plays better in Alaska than it does in the "unreal" America, or at least in the world I inhabit. Maybe she thought she was just being folksy, that the whole slaughter thing is folksy, the sort of things "real" Americans like to do, or at least have no problem wit

I agree that it shows that Palin is peculiarly unaware of nuance and irony.  But possibly this is because Alaskans live closer to these realities? 

Kathy at Comments from Left Field reports:  "When asked whether she wanted that scene as a backdrop, she replied, “No worries.”"

You know, I don't understand people who hunt for entertainment  I oppose all blood sports.  But another awkward fact is that somebody's got to do it.   Another reality is that stewardship of the wild may include keeping down the predator population (wolves in Alaska, alligators here in Florida).  I love watching alligators bask in the sun, but it wasn't that long ago that a woman in a nearby town got nabbed and devoured by an alligator as she was sitting at the end of her dock at a local lake, dreamily dangling her legs in the water.  You have to decide which you'd rather have:  alligators or people. 

I don't participate, but I think people who shudder need to stop doing that and start realizing that this is yet another way that our very existence does harm to other species.  The correct attitude is---again---some degree of reverence toward those who have to die so we can thrive.

What you can say about this video is that it reflects Palin's fundamental innocence---which I find appealing, much as I loathe her---and her fundamental insensitivity as well. 

The Impolitic had the best line of all:  "Brings new meaning to the idea of tossing red meat to the base."

Memeorandum got it some more bloggery good stuff.

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Comments

[sfyakan]

I find this incidence very disturbing and sad. On the other hand, maybe this will turn some "meat eaters" into vegetarians. Many never fathomed how "brutal" the process was. We were so naive.

Sibylle Faye
http://www.avianweb.com