The Turkey Pardon

Each year, a turkey is delivered to the White House for a Presidential pardon, after which the lucky turkey will live a life of indolence on a farm or petting zoo. But can this popular ritual survive the current tumultuous atmosphere? This year’s designee, a 55 pound, broad-breasted tom named Jive, has grave concerns.

The several hundred other turkeys penned in around him on the feedlot tried to cheer him up. “Why the long beak?” they asked.

“It’s a mockery of the democratic process!” the lucky turkey announced. “Why should President Trump decide whether to pardon me? A decision of this importance – particularly of importance to me – should be left to the American people. Becoming a pardoned turkey is a lifetime appointment – my lifetime. It would be wrong to let a president decide whether to pardon a turkey this late into his term! We should wait until a new President takes office and let him decide whether to pardon me. Let the people vote, I say. In fact, the people have voted, which makes my point, doesn’t it? The people have rejected Trump as a President, so why should we trust him to pardon me? It would be a gross violation of a cherished political tradition.”

“But what about precedent?” some of the older turkeys argued. “Daddy Bush pardoned a turkey in 1992, even though he’d already lost an election to Bill Clinton. The same for Clinton with W. And Obama pardoned a turkey after Trump had been elected weeks before. The President’s elected for four years, not three years, so he ought to pardon four turkeys, not three,” they argued.

“Yeah, yeah,” the turkey interrupted testily. “But those situations were completely dissimilar. The White House was controlled by one party and the Senate by another when those turkeys were pardoned. Now they’re controlled by the same party, and that makes it a totally different situation.”

The other turkeys were confused by this reasoning “What does that have to do with anything? Who cares if –"

“I know, I know,” the lucky turkey cut them off with some embarrassment. “It’s just an argument I’m trying out. I heard Mitch McConnell say it, and he’s obviously got some turkey in him, so I thought, who cares if It doesn’t make any sense? I’m a desperate bird.”

The other turkeys tried to soothe the lucky turkey’s negative attitude. “Come on, man. You’re going to the White House and Trump is going to pardon you. It’s a piece of cake.”

“The hell it is,” the lucky turkey said irately. “You think Trump is going to pardon me? Do I look like Joe Arpaio to you? Do you expect Kim Kardashian to catch her husband in a butterfly net and go to the White House to plead my case for me, like I was some kind of drug dealer?” The lucky turkey stared into the distance as if having a thought. “Maybe if I had the goods on Trump, like Roger Stone did...” But the lucky turkey quickly recognized the unworkability of this plan. “Nah. Face it, man. I’m doomed.”

The other turkeys tried to reason with him. “This is just a feel good story for whoever is doing the pardoning, an easy PR win,” a savvy turkey argued.

“Yeah, sure,” the turkey snorted. “It’s as easy as condemning white supremacists. Trump’s going to look at me and think ‘This turkey’s worth hundreds of dollars, and once the IRS disallows my bogus tax refund and the banks want their $400 million back, I’ll be broke. Why should I give the turkey away?’ Oh, sure, first he’ll put me in a room at the Trump International on the government’s tab, I’ll give you that. But then, Trump’s old lady will look at me and say, ‘Why should we give turkey away? Let’s eat it!’ And then his sons will set me loose on the South Lawn so they can hunt me with bows and arrows. I’m in a dark place, man.”

“But the Presidential turkey pardon is a treasured American tradition,” the other turkeys argued. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Opposing foreign intervention in our elections was an American tradition. So was having empathy for people with a highly contagious disease. You think I’m going to get a better result than the right to vote or the victims of a plague?” The lucky turkey shook his head dejectedly. “I am so screwed.”

The other turkeys continued to accentuate the positive. “You’re going to end up on a farm so kids can pet you. You’re set for life.”

“Big whoop -- how long is that?” the lucky turkey groused. “Look at me. I can barely carry my own weight across the feedlot. I’m shot up with hormones that leave me vulnerable to every disease known to birds, and if I’m not slaughtered for dinner I’ll be ground up for animal feed. And now the good news is that a bunch of obnoxious toddlers can poke me through a fence until I die? Spare me.”

Sure enough, at that moment, the foreman walked over, threw the lucky into a cage, put the cage in the back of the truck, drove to Washington, D.C., and – to be fair, as the lucky turkey had predicted -- got a suite for them at the Trump International on Pennsylvania Avenue. The turkey had a drink from the minibar and contemplated his situation, when a strategy suddenly came to him.

Could it work? It was his only chance.

The next morning he was brought to the Rose Garden and placed before the President. A swarm of photographers’ shutters sounded like a steroidal cicada infestation. Those White House staffers who were not yet infected smiled masklessly. Those staffers who were infected smiled masklessly as well. The President came out to where the lucky turkey was positioned and posed with it, flashing his signature thumbs up. And when he was about to read his remarks, the lucky turkey grabbed the microphone from him and announced to the crowd,

“I hereby pardon the President of the United States.”

The camera clicked and whirred, the President smiled, and the tradition of pardoning a turkey on Thanksgiving was maintained, even in these turbulent times.

Hurricane Iota

With autumn turning the blazing trees bare, the Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer, and Christmas decorations on the supermarket shelves, it’s time to settle back by the hearth and discuss the ongoing hurricane season. Hurricane Iota is now destabilizing Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua in ways Oliver North only dreamt.

Hurricane Iota – think about it – more than an ecological aberration, it’s an Orwellian oxymoron.

Anthropogenic climate change is now understood by most everyone save those political leaders who would have told Superman’s father Krypton was going to be just fine. One of them deserves special mention -- Oregon State Senator Fred Girod, a climate denier who once walked off the State Senate floor to deny the quorum needed to pass carbon cap-and-trade legislation. During the current spate – or is it a pandemic -- of wildfires, he returned home to find his treasured, woodland “forever home” burned to the ground. In an exemplary burst of consistency, he blamed the dispossessing conflagration not on climate change, but on the forests, which he noted are full of wood just lyin’ on the forest floor, itchin’ to burn. It’s as if the rising ocean swept through the gates at Mar-A-Lago, strolling the grounds and frequenting the ballrooms like a dues-paying guest, but ownership (didn’t say his name!) then blamed the ocean, which is “full of water.”

At least the Girod fire story offers the pleasure of schadenfreude. A more gripping sign of the planet’s descent into incontinence is the increase in the number of tropical storms – 30 this year, a record that will stand as long as Bonds’ 73 home runs, although both outcomes can be considered juiced. As even small children understand, a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and a warmer ocean supplies it, giving rise to larger and more powerful storms, as well as wash that doesn’t dry as quickly and a pandemic – or is it a spate? -- of frizzy hair.

The best indicator of the severity of this problem is that NOAA, the government’s official presence for matters of climate and weather, reached the end of its annual alphabetical list of names for this year’s Atlantic storms two months ago To be fair, the list is actually 21, not 26, names long – Q, U, X, Y, and Z are omitted, in deference to people named Queenie or Xavier, who have suffered enough. NOAA’s response was to call up the Greek alphabet, but only the first eight letters -- that’s up to theta, for you English majors. This was an optimistic limit, since it took place on September 17, and the number of storms that occur in mid-October over the last century has been greater than that in mid-August. Predictably, Iota is the ninth letter. Fortunately, the Greek alphabet offers depth – it has 15 characters left.

But Greek letters are cold and impersonal, better applied to statistical measurements and radiation than real world catastrophes. Moreover, they are ill-suited to their primary purpose – to personify their devastation they cause. Katrina forced thousands into the Superdome where, according to one presidential parent, they had it better than they did in their own homes. Sandy was so consequential that a grateful Governor Christie kind-of-hugged President Obama, which kind-of-led to the end of his Presidential run and the beginning of his successful new career as a sap. But there’s no dignity in saying your basement was flooded by Hurricane Omicron, or that the steeple of your church was blown over by tropical storm Nu. And Hurricane Omega sounds like a movie starring The Rock.

Aren’t there better alternatives? The first to describe the post-alphabet terrain is, of course, Dr. Seuss, in his visionary classic, On Beyond Zebra. In that opus, a boy named Conrad Cornelius O’Donald O’Dell becomes the linguistic Edmund Hillary (or, perhaps, Tenzing Norgay), the first to summit the letters beyond ‘z,” such as Yuzz, Wum, Um, and Quan. Hurricane Yuzz? Too onomatopoeic.

But then what? The Hebrew alphabet comes to mind, but it has problems. For example, a “b” (“Bet,” sometimes “Bait” or “Beth”) could be a “b” or a “v” and a “p” a “p” or an “f” depending on whether it has a dot, what word it’s in, and the day of the week. The Russian Cyrillic alphabet also comes to mind, but its first eight letters ---a, be, ve, ge, de, je, jo, and ze – are lousy names for storms, although that could just be disinformation.

There is a better alternative available to NOAA – using the common names of pet dogs. First and foremost, it can be done. An initial take might include; Astro, Buck (a nod to Jack London), Casey, Duke, Eddie, Fala, Ginger, Hunter, Itsy, Jinx, Killer, Lady, Milo, Nero, Otis, Pepper, Rex, Sam, Tramp, and Winnie. Following NOAA, the list elides Q, U, X, Y, and Z – Queenie can only take so much, although Victor, a malamute puppy who lives down the street, took umbrage at the omission. And it’s not the first tragedy to befall (Old) Yeller.

Sure, Hurricane Fido lacks a certain gravitas, but…compared to what? This year saw Hurricane Isaias, the Iberian version of the name Isaiah. Granted, there are (some) real people named Isaias – Isaias of Constantinople ruled that distant outpost in the fourteenth century, and Isaias Afwerki is the President of Eritrea, a more consequential post than the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana or Wasilla, Alaska. But when you say “My home was destroyed by Hurricane Fido,” your respondent can say, “That’s a bitch!,” although they might wonder if you were talking about a hurricane or a pet with distemper.

Hurricane dog names would take headline writers and TV weathermen everywhere to new heights of bad taste. “Rex Pees on Gulf,” “Bowser Rolls Over the Outer Banks,” or “FEMA Cleans Up Pepper’s Mess” would be inevitable, even if in questionable taste. If nothing else, it breathes new life into the enduring “Dog Bites Man.”

Now, you could argue people sometimes die or lose everything in hurricanes, making hurricanes dog pet names shockingly inappropriate. Granted. But, consider. There are legions of Fred Girods out there who see climate change either as part of earth’s natural “cycles,” the work of a benevolent God, or an outright hoax, and dog names offend you? It’s a bad moment for the planet, but a worse one for satire.

2021 Publication Schedule

There’s been an average of roughly one book about Trump and his inner circle released every single day for the last 188 weeks.

Time Magazine, Sept. 8, 2020

With a defeat at hand, the leading figures in the Trump Administration have their tell-all books ready! Vitriol ® Press, America’s premier purveyor of literary frenzy, is proud to announce its schedule of major publication releases for 2021.

March

Anthony Scaramucci

“Did I Say That?”

Excerpt: “When I said Trump was a ‘blue-collar President’ I meant ‘orange jump suit President’. But I meant it when I said Trump was the President of the working man. I know, because I’m Italian and I’m a working man – I’ve worked at Goldman, at hedge funds, I’ve gotten my hands dirty. Of, course, it took me a while to realize he was an uncaring, disloyal, monomaniacal sociopath, which I suppose makes me either a transfixed, childlike groupie or a rabid, disposable Goebbels who had to be put down. But I will give the guy this. He showed me if you just kept talking, no matter how ridiculous the stuff coming out of your mouth was, people will pay attention to you. And that’s why I now intend to be part of the solution.”

Includes a minute-by-minute diary of Scaramucci’s eleven days in the White House!

April

Rex Tillerson

“The Dignity of Public Service”

Excerpt: “I was flattered to be asked by President Trump to be his Secretary of ..what was it?...that’s right, State. Yes, he was obviously a deeply-damaged idiot, but I was obligated to accept because of my commitment to a nobler cause – the avoidance of capital gains taxes on the $228 million in Exxon stock and stock options I had to place in a trust when I assumed whichever position it was, thus saving me about $45 million. Yes, this was not a great amount of money for someone who had been an executive in the oil industry, but it was the principle of the thing. The catch is you have to be in government service for a full year to get this deal, but I figured I could dick around with department reorganization for a year before they got wise to me, and I did, although there were times when talking to the Kushner kid made me want to take my eyes out with knitting needles. But when all is said and done, public service is a noble and dignified calling, and it was a privilege to serve my country. OK…done. How do you turn this tape machine off?”

June

Kim Jung Un

“I Left My Heart on the Table”

Excerpt: “I gazed into His Excellency’s perfectly tanned face and let my eyes swim over his magnificent hair, and I was suddenly lost in a sea of orange. I knew this was the world leader for me. He meant more to me than my uncle, more than that forward for the Pistons. Later, as we were together, quiet and alone, I looked up and said, ‘You know, that Stormy Daniels woman said it was shaped like a mushroom, but it’s more like one of our staunch, proud North Korean cabbages we occasionally enjoy eating, since we only eat occasionally.’ He was more than an Excellency – he was a Delicacy.”

Poster sized photo of the two Supreme Leaders enclosed.

August

Dr. Scott Atlas

“Dr. Atlas’ Medical Dictionary For Home or Office”

Excerpt: “The childhood diseases are widely misunderstood. For example, the mumps can be controlled by applying an ice pack to the swelling, 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off. Chicken pox are fun! Measles, contrary to old wives tales, cannot be prevented with a vaccine. Instead, if a member of your family gets the measles (it’s easy to tell – just check if that family member has been in physical contact with a Hassidic rabbi), the best thing to do is let your family develop a ‘herd immunity’ to the disease by sharing the sick person’s food and using their towels and toothbrush. When in doubt, always rely on this trusted medical precept – if you want it to be true, it probably is.”

“I keep it on my desk for constant reference.” Presidential physician Dr. Scott Conley.

September

General James Mattis

“A Time for Truth”

Excerpt: “Some argue I should have revealed definitively before the election my view the President was criminally unfit for office, as uncaring about global affairs as he was the need to button his suitcoat when he stood. Somehow, a few coy comments in The Atlantic did not satisfy them. But I had sworn an oath of fidelity to the code of silence that pervades the armed forces, and my commitment to that oath was so strong I held my silence even as the President tried to destroy root and branch the institution I swore to defend. But now that it’s all over and time to shoot the wounded after battle, I am relieved of my debt of honor and can finally speak the truth – the guy’s nuts, mad as a hatter. But my integrity has been preserved.”

With an Introduction by John Kelley and not much from H. R. McMaster either.

November

Kayleigh MacEnany

“Out My Ass and Straight From the Hip”

Excerpt: “’I will never lie to you,’ I said to the press corps on my first day on the job. It was a vow I kept faithfully. When I said President Trump’s pussy grabbing implied consent on the part of the grabbed, I knew it was true – how could it be otherwise? When I said the Mueller Report was a “complete and total exoneration” for the President, I was simply repeating what the Attorney General said. When I said the attempted rape charges again Justice Kavanaugh were verifiably false, I was on firm ground – if he had done that, why wasn’t it on his calendar? And who could argue with my remark that there’s “ample evidence of fraud” regarding absentee and mail-in ballots? Just look at it! It’s a mail-in ballot! How many times have you gotten the same piece of junk mail twice, even three times, or stuff addressed to “occupant?” As they taught us at Harvard Law School, Res ipsa loquitur, meaning “if you want it to be true, it probably is.” Or did my doctor say that?

December

Lindsay Graham

“My Friend, John McCain”

Excerpt: “Someone once said my string of self-contradictions and reversals has made so many heads snap I had the chiropractic vote locked up. Ha, ha, that’s a good one. Sure, sometimes I’d bristle when the President made fun of a guy like McCain, a man I loved when he was alive, in front of me, and buying the drinks, but remember, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. For example, sometimes when my Commander in Chief and I would be out golfing at one of his sumptuous golf courses he would suddenly call out, ‘McCain! How I hate that pig-faced bastard! What a failure! I wish the North Vietnamese had slapped some sense into that loser.’ Many people might wonder how I could tolerate such talk, but I look at it this way: I called the President a ‘race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot’ and he got over that, so how could I do anything less?”