Turkeys

November 21, 2008
Turkeys

I thought I had done enough about Sarah Palin for awhile. There are other important things to discuss! How the world, especially the Islamic world, is reacting to Obama's election. Another glance at the ridda (apostasy) issue. What Obama's proposed appointments tell about how he will actually govern. What his choice for Secretary of State will mean ...

Instead I'm doing yet another column on our famous/infamous Governor and the media. In fact, I'm afraid this isn't going to end the "theme" either. She is still top-level international news.

It is uncanny. Biden has been around and involved in critical national and international matters for over 36 years. Palin probably made the front page of a newspaper not published in Alaska for the first time less than four months ago. If you Google "Biden" you get 25,000,000 hits. Quite respectable! That's a lot of people talking about you! Google "Palin", however, and you get 95,000,000 hits! Let that number sink in. 95 MILLION hits! The latest estimate of the population of the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau is 305,726,193. Of course this is comparing apples and oranges ... but there are nearly 1/3 as many "Google available and located" documents mentioning Palin as there are people in this country. For some reason that seems mind-boggling to me.

Nor is it because "Palin" is a more common name. Put the name in quotes and run "Sarah Palin" and you get 48,500,000 hits. "Joe Biden" only gets you 12,000,000. Even "Hillary Clinton" only gets 28,700,000 and she's "been around" in the public consciousness a bit longer than Sarah Palin has also.

Stories about her remain at the top of the national interest meter. Articles about her are cited at the top of nearly every "most popular story" list put out by the major news agencies.

Oh, the media still has a nasty streak that they can't seem to break when they get the opportunity to make fun of her. Like, for instance, the topic of this column: the nonsensical big "top news story" about Palin pardoning a turkey; a minor Thanksgiving ritual done by essentially all governors and presidents. Then she gave a short interview, apparently without realizing what else was in the camera viewfinder. During the video filming of the interview, workers in the background continued with the job at hand at a turkey farm shortly before Thanksgiving [duh]: butchering turkeys.

That is not a huge hook to build a story on ... and yet, it is currently (and has been for several days!) the number one story accessed through Huffington Post (and presumably near the top in interest of current news stories period!) At Huffington the story and video has 673,582 views and 5,416 comments. This blows all the "competition" out of the water. Not only the "real" and "serious" news stories ... but it even makes the silly "Obamas Expected to Have Sex In White House" story seem to be boring [91,912 views, 222 comments]! (The Obama article is actually hilarious ... especially the comments from people who don't understand that it is satire! But it is only 1/7th as popular as a boring interview of Palin at a turkey farm!)

I am beginning to understand that people (and cameras and media types) are addicted to all things Palin. But the video of a turkey pardon? Arianna [Huffington] even mentions it in her little front page editorial squib telling people to make sure not to miss it! And the comments are (largely) insanely obnoxious. Many of them call for Palin to please just go away and shut up. Ya know, if they wouldn't keep a' clicking on any news story about her and adding comments ... presumably she would! There were 49 other state Governors and a sitting U.S. President that (probably) all did the same traditional "turkey pardon". Yet not one, other than Sarah's, made the YouTube best-seller list. If people don't want to hear Sarah Palin then they should [get your crayons out so you can take notes] "stop listening"! Clearly, the turkeys weren't all behind Sarah.

"Help! Save me from myself! Stop showing news stories about Palin because I can't keep myself from watching them!" Even atrociously stupid ones like this.

Headline news: the turkey you eat for Thanksgiving was killed before you cooked it. I know this is a shock! [Well, unless it is a PETA tofu turkey :-) Are there such things? Actually, I'm sure there are given the rampant
idiocy that a rich free society engenders. Don't they have any sympathy for the poor tofus they keep killing? Heartless I tell you. We should start a "SAVE THE TOFU" campaign! We could run some video clips of masked ninja types sneaking up on baby tofus and smashing them with clubs until they die a slow and painful death!]

I just checked. It isn't just a bad joke (the tofu turkeys, not the baby tofu killers - that is a bad joke :-). But they really do make tofu "turkey". [Sigh.] It's called Tofurkey and PETA even has a website full of "oh so yummy" Thanksgiving recipes! Saints preserve us!

Doesn't anyone know that tofu is curdled, coagulated soy beans??? It is a perfectly reasonable thing to eat ... if you are starving and lost in the desert and there is nothing potentially edible for hundreds of miles ... and you've already eaten your belt. Under any other conditions it is pathetic. But I digress :-)

I think it is all ... Reagan's (?) fault. I can't remember if he was Governor of California when they decided to close down all the "establishments for the sanity deprived" [this is California we're talking about after all :-)] and send the crazy people out into the streets. This caused such things as sidewalk congestion on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and PETA.

Granted, Palin isn't as "ewwee" squeamish as this patriarchal society likes its women to be. [Grow up America!] Sorry, I, and probably most Alaskans, have difficulties with such elitist machismo - on the frontier a woman has value, she isn't just considered to be decoration.] Sarah kills and butchers moose and other animals. She commercially fishes and tromps around in boats full of dead and dying salmon.

[By strange coincidence one of the big positives for me about Hillary, (personally, not politically) was that she wasn't the squeamish type either. She worked a "slime line" in Alaska when she was younger ... which consists of butchering salmon, some of which aren't quite dead, as they come past you at the salmon cannery on a conveyor belt.] Hillary noted that, armed with a rain coat, hip boots and a knife, the slime line job "was the best preparation ever for working in Washington"! But that's only because she has never field dressed a moose! :-)

So, sure, maybe some more "girlie" governor would have been grossed out. I suppose Sarah could take pointers and learn. Given that she learned to tear down, clean and reassemble a rifle in only a few minutes I'm sure she could manage this. But if you've butchered a moose, the idea that seeing a turkey "prepared" for the Thanksgiving table is objectionable is just silly. As is the reaction by all those who are grossed out by it (but can't keep themselves from watching it while ranting about it!)

I realize that there are turkeys involved here all right. I just can't decide who all they are.

But ~675,000 views just through Huffington of a turkey pardon? I'd say we probably could find at least a half a million of them in that viewer group.

All that attention. And it was probably the least important thing Sarah did that day! Pu-leese people! Get a life!