Nation’s wrongly convicted turkeys prepare for last appeal

By Ronald Berry

WASHINGTON- Each Thanksgiving, one lucky turkey receives a pardon from the President of the United States. This Thanksgiving will be no exception, so the nation’s imprisoned turkeys have hired high-priced attorneys to prepare their final appeals before being stuffed, baked, and ritualistically carved into slabs.

As with any legal proceeding, the Presidential turkey appeal will come down to the legal issues and the emotional reaction evoked by the individual turkeys’ stories. Advisors say that President Obama is especially partial to stories of turkeys who received especially foul treatment from the police, ultimately resulting in being gamed by the justice system.

The practice of choosing only one turkey each year to pardon has been a cause of controversy. In some cases, there may be more than one turkey deserving of a pardon, whether the turkey was wrongly convicted or converted to Islam in turkey prison and wrote children’s books. The Reverend Al Sharpton has complained that the turkey pardoning system suffers from racial imbalance. “The President may not be aware of his mistreatment of the dark meat, and that, my friends, is the root of the problem,” the Rev told supporters at a pardoning rally Tuesday. “All I want is to see one African-American turkey pardoned by the President. I thought that it would all be different with Barack, but even now, we have never had an African-American turkey pardoned by our President!”



Other groups also have problems with the practice of pardoning a turkey every year. For instance, the nation’s pigs staged a protest of the turkey pardons at Farmer Brown’s slop yard, where nearly 200,000 head of cattle showed up to have their oinks heard. The pigs complained of the bad publicity they have received in the past year through the naming of Swine Flu, as well as the preferential treatment of turkeys, even though the Christmas ham is a tradition with nearly as much history. They pointed out that pigs have made many great contributions to society, from the movie Babe to the BLT sandwich to curly tails. The pigs concluded that they face discriminatory treatment from the Jews, who hate them because they do not eat pork, and who secretly control everything.

The pardoning process has faced additional criticism in recent years when it came out that President Bush gave undue privilege to turkeys from his home farm. President Obama has gone to great lengths to give the appearance of impartiality in his turkey pardons by refusing to consider pardons for any turkey that has worked for a lobbying firm in the last five years. Exactly zero turkeys were excluded by this new stipulation.

Whichever turkey President Obama chooses to pardon will undoubtedly be relieved to live through another Thanksgiving. On the other hand, that turkey will not be relieved to find out that it will continue to live in a one-foot square cage with the end of its beak chopped off and its body constantly pumped full of synthetic hormones. The turkey will live through Thanksgiving, but will likely be butchered and packaged into high-sodium deli meat within two months.