While I can think of better photo ops, this is kind of a silly uproar. How exactly do folks think their food gets to them? Your t-bone is not born in shrink wrap. If this upsets you, you may want to visit a slaughter-house- you will never eat meat again. Truth be told, I would prefer if everyone visited a major slaughterhouse, because once they see how gross it is, they might start to support their local farmers for their meat.
Actually, I was thinking about something like this while I was eating lunch. They had all sorts of pictures of game fish being strung up on the docks with blood everywhere and loads of people standing around with beaming faces. Everyone gets all upset about dolphins in nets, but the tuna and marlin get it every time and people cheer.
*** Update ***
Chris Matthews just claimed she stood there while turkeys were assassinated, and several of the blogs at memeorandum are clueless as ever, claiming the turkeys were having their necks snapped. Well, not really. They were having their heads lopped off and then being bled out. See the big vat there? That be blood.
wonkie
I’m a vegetarian. I quit eating beef about thirty years ago because of the way cattle ranchers abuse public land.
Now I’m even more of an extremist that that-I eat no meat at all, wear no leather, and tithe monthly to animal welfare causes.
I just like animals better most people, I guess.
Josh Hueco
My favorite part of that entirely surreal video was when the reporter asked the governor what programs would be on the ‘chopping block,’ at which time the guy stuck the turkey, head-first, into the hopper. Perfect!
ninerdave
It probably wouldn’t have been as big a deal if she hadn’t just "pardoned" a turkey.
That said, I agree shop local. Quality is immeasurable better, even though I prefer not to know how my filet went from mooing to my plate.
Comrade Stuck
It was informative to me, as I’ve wondered exactly how it was done with Turkeys. Having grown up on a farm, I watched chickens get their neck rung off many times, but no turkeys. Kinda of looked like a little upside down Guillotine, and the executioner’s shit eating grin while Teh Wingnut Queen prattled on was high comedy, IMHO.
smiley
The Jungle literally changed my life when I read it as a teenager. It’s why I’m a liberal. Um, that and Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Still, and Nash.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
As I was saying over at Shakes’ place, she knew what she was doing when she told the camera guy not to worry about the framing. She gets to look tough to people buying into the tough frontierswoman image and she gets to be snide about offending any vegans living on the coasts in that interview on MSNBC today. And I think the "chopping block" choice of words was extremely deliberate, not an amusing accident. Jesus, look at all the freaking press she got today.
The killing method used was probably one of the most humane available. Meat is murder, even if it is tasty murder that I buy every week at the grocery store. I may not like seeing life get transformed into calories, but it’s part of the deal I’ve signed onto and I’d be a hypocrite to shriek about it.
Can we just start ignoring her now? Can we pretend it’s Lent already and we’re giving her up?
EDIT: John, the heads were left on, think, but the cuts in the neck were large enough to let them bleed out. The turkeys aren’t exactly calm and beatific about being killed, but being put in those cones does seem to make them quietly accept it. I wonder if the poor, dimwitted things still feel terror.
Comrade Stuck
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse:
In this instance, Murder most Fowl. :–)
RAM
For me, hilarity ensues due to the mind-blowing hyprocracy; issue the transparently fake "pardon" for the turkey and then carry on as if nothing is happening as a whole flock is decapitated while Bible Spice does an innane stand-up interview. I grew up on a farm where we butchered our own beef, pork, and chickens so I’ve absolutely no problem with the concept. It’s the total idiocy…I haven’t stopped laughing for two days. What a holiday treat!
LisaR
It wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t just pardoned a turkey and if she didn’t seem so oblivious to the upside down turkey being bled out into a vat behind her, and if she didn’t rattle on soooo much.
If she wasn’t so verbose maybe she could’ve made a quick but effective point and the photo-op wouldn’t have captured, not one, but two turkey’s being killed. :)
But she just keeps blithering on. Is this one of those death imitating life or life imitating death things? Hilarious.
Polish the Guillotines
Off with their heads, sayeth I.
Never thought I’d defend Palin for any reason, but this is just silly. If anything, she walks the walk re. cappin’ the asses of food items.
Cole’s right, ninerdave’s got a point, and anyone who eats critters needs to stow the damned fainting couches.
mxh
Yes, turkeys are killed so that we can have Thanksgiving. However, doing an extended televised interview in front of a guy stuffing turkeys head first into the funnel of death is still a bad idea.
A similarly bad idea: doing an extended televised interview on the importance of Mothers Day while people fuck in the background.
sidereal
OH MY GOD.
Nobody told me turkey meat came from killing turkeys!! Palin is genocidal!
No, seriously. If it makes you feel bad, reduce your meat consumption. If you rail at Palin for being near turkeys being killed, then go out and have a big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, you are a hypocrite.
gwangung
Not so fast there….
Polish the Guillotines
Bruce Lee, right?
JGabriel
John Cole, on the Sarah Palin – Turkey Abbatoir Interview:
Okay. So when Palin gives an interview while two people fuck in the background, can we expect the defense to be: How exactly do folks think their babies are made?
And no, I don’t think there’s any equivalence between human sex and turkey blood-letting.
But both are inappropriate background activities for an interview of a state’s top governmental executive. Unbelievably and comically so.
Thus, the uproar.
(Hmm, looks like MXH got to that example before me. But the point still stands.)
.
Comrade The Other Steve
I’m going to guess people probably don’t like you much either.
Anyway, I thought it was rather odd and I guess goes to show just how little she shares in common with Real American values.
I’ve been around farms and seen animals slaughtered and what not, but it’s not something you glorify and smile about.
tavella
Yeah, it’s the pardon bit that makes it so surreal. If she was just there to talk about farm conditions or promote eat-local, it’s still a bit, well, distracting but not bizarre. That traditional kidfriendly pardon combined with the trench of blood and the death throes, is uh, wacky.
Comrade The Other Steve
I’m so glad she’s stuck in Alaska. God I hope the Republicans are dumb enough to run with her in 2012.
matt
Not "funnels of death". They’re called "killing cones". Really.
Also, the plucking is far more nauseating than the bleeding.
Polish the Guillotines
Okay. That’s just an awesome band name.
JGabriel
@Josh Hueco:
Yes, that particular locution was amusingly unfortunate, though one can understand how the reporter subconsiously chose it – it being "in the air", so to speak.
.
gwangung
Well, yeah. And not very….presidential behavior.
But very frat-boy like. Which is why the Corner folks are so ga-ga over over.
ninerdave
@Comrade The Other Steve:
I’ll register republican in the primary just to vote for her.
Josh Hueco
killer cones?
Comrade Stuck
This could also be asked of Republicans on Obama’s Inauguration Day.
Joshua Norton
Oh please. It’s the irony that makes this whole episode hilarious – mainly because of Caribou Barbie’s innate cluelessness. Remember the old "WKRP in Cincinnati" Thanksgiving episode where they released turkey’s out of a helicopter only to realize they really couldn’t fly? We just witnessed another version of that.
Clueless to the nth power. The new leader of the Repug party.
Delia
killer cones? Any relation to the Cone of Silence?
And completely OT, but I just learned a completely awesome factoid on Countdown. In an earlier point in his life Han Solo was married to a Wookie.
Polish the Guillotines
Ah, the classics.
slag
Personally, I just look forward to when the whole thing goes away. I already know how these things are killed, which is why I choose not to eat dead animal. But really, it’s the addition of Palin that prevents me from watching the video. I don’t ever want to see her face again.
Comrade Jake
I don’t think this upset folks. People just find it insanely funny. It’s like a scene from a Coen brothers movie.
JGabriel
John Cole:
To be fair, dolphins have consiousness and self-awareness – they’ve even passed the mirror test. And they’re mammals.
Tuna and marlin are much further from us on the evolutionary scale, plus they’re not known to be very bright. Makes them a lot less sympathetic.
.
Delia
Sarah Palin is a character from a Coen brothers movie.
BlueIA
Palin reads from the proclamation from the turkey enclosure:
"I, Governor Palin, as a friend to creatures great and small…"
"whereas Alaska doesn’t even have the death penalty"
Then she strategically does the interview where the turkeys meet their very own death penalty.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Speaking of weird images, can anyone tell me what the hell the Google logo image for today is about? I’m confused. I see what looks like little men raining on houses and a green tomato wearing a hat. Anyone else got a better explanation?
JGabriel
@Joshua Norton:
"AS God is my Witness, I thought turkeys could fly…"
One of the all time greatest comic lines, ever. Up there with the best of Shakespeare’s comedies or Fielding’s Tom Jones.
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CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
She’s one of the muses in the river singing about dead babies? (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxlyKA9O9LA
JGabriel
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
110th birthday of Renee Magritte, French Surrealist.
The image of the man wearing a bowler, face hidden behind a green apple, is from a famous self-portrait.
.
Dennis - SGMM
Tbogg nailed it:
gex
The thing is that all the carnivores I know feel the same way about this topic. If you don’t like the treatment, you have two options: 1) become a vegetarian or 2) reconcile yourself to the necessity but support local farmers using humane techniques. If you are unwilling to do this even at additional cost, you really aren’t that upset so STFU.
This is why me and the would-be-Mrs. shop at our local coop.
Comrade Jake
Palin does continue to impress me with her ability to speak for several minutes and still say a whole lot of nothing. I’m really not convinced she knows jack shit.
slag
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Requisite poorly designed "Which Coen Brothers Character are You" quiz ensues.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Ah, Thank you JGabriel. That image truly confused me something terrible. I have to admit, I know nothing about French surrealism.
Joel
I’m calling shenanegans..
Trying to get people to get all high and mighty about the turkey killing so that she can rally the base one. more. time.
Cabalamat
I’m not a Palin fan by any means but if she did it deliberately to piss off squeamish and PETA types, good for her.
I like eating bits of dead animals, because they taste yummy. Maybe I should start an organisation to spread my views, we could call it People for the Eating of Tasty Animals :-)
telesilla
I am so over this woman and her idiocy. I really wish everyone would move on and leave her in the obscurity that she so richly deserves.
As for the turkeys, well, once you’ve seen a lamb slaughtered–very humanely–in your driveway, seeing a turkey offed is no big deal.
Ash Can
Hearing about that video (I have no desire to actually watch it, thankyewverymuch) brings the term "tone-deaf" to mind.
smiley
OK. I’m being a self-absorbed asshole here, but how many of you have read Upton Sinclair’s ":The Jungle"? AKA "Jungle"? For those of you who haven’t, it’s one of the best arguments for humane treatment of humans (mostly humans) and other animals I’ve ever read. It’s a condemnation of the packing houses in Chicago in the early 1900’s. Read it if you haven’t Godmnmit.
MobiusKlein
The group People Eating Tasty Animals already exists.
http://www.tastyanimals.us/ originally in at peta.org.
Delia
I was thinking more of the guy with the woodchipper in Fargo.
Tsulagi
Maybe uproar for some, I just thought it was funny. The cluelessness that is Palin.
She stages a photo op to keep her face on the teevee by pardoning a turkey. A true compassionate conservative. Then continues her photo op outside while holding a latte as some guy in the background is stuffing turkeys into a funnel like thing to whack their heads off and let them bleed out. She continues on in bubbly you-betcha mode as you see some poor-ass turkey feet-up behind her in the funnel.
If some grade-school children were watching that on their local news, I bet some of their classroom drawings depicting Thanksgiving could be interesting. A smiling, winking Gov. Palin on one side, with headless turkeys on the other and blood everywhere.
Yep. And if you’re a carnivore, I still think hunting is far more humane to animals than picking up the plastic wrapped stuff at a supermarket.
Of course there are exceptions, see Cheney. That Asswipe Supreme and his “hunting” party stepping out of their Cadillac Escalades once shot over 400 pen raised and released pheasants at a private club during a Republican man-bonding soiree.
slag
@Cabalamat: How original.
Comrade Jake
Doesn’t Palin wink at the reporter towards the end of the clip, also? That was kind of like a bonus.
kidkawartha
The more important question is when will she pardon that pathetic turkey she was on the ticket with for running the saddest campaign in modern history? :)
Allan
The reason some of us are obsessed with the video is that it is the perfect metaphor.
The turkeys are the Republican Party.
While Sarah Palin, swathed in a faux-Burberry scarf, prattles on endlessly about absolutely nothing, the party is lowered headfirst into a killing cone, its throat is slit, its blood pours out as it thrashes helplessly at the bloodletting, until at last it dies.
cay
Dolphins are sentient mammals. There is no comparison.
ninerdave
Also.
Jim
Also had the where do you think meat comes from reaction, but what is interesting is that no one on Palin’s staff would have recognized what the visual would be and had them move.
Did you notice Palin’s reaction about 1/2 way through when she realizes what’s happening behind her. She knew that this would be gris for the mill
Xenos
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: Sirens, they were. In any case, Palin is no muse, and has clearly brought the Republican ship in shore and on to the rocks.
The Grand Panjandrum
I love a plate full of dead animals for any meal. The turkeys were being killed in a humane way and the killing cones were probably the best evidence.
BTW your steak, the one you had for dinner, doesn’t come from a grocery store. It comes from a cow. A cow that has to be killed so you can enjoy that dinner.
Gobble, gobble. That turkey dinner? Well, I prefer to buy food from a farmer I know. I don’t fucking cry over dead animals. I eat them. I just want to know what kind of life they lived and that they died humanely.
Palin who? Should I know who she is? or was?
This is a story for cable TV and the blogs.
Richard Bottoms
Silly uproar?
Have you learned nothing. Never give a Republican a single inch, ever. Anything keeps that reduces their power, removes one more them from office, or any way shape or form give Democrats the advantage is exactly the thing to do.
Always.
JGabriel
Xenos:
"Siren" is, in fact, a pretty good metaphor for Palin.
The shore is to the left, but Sarah and her ilk are singing for the Republican ship to continue sailing ever further to the right (1), till they are completely lost at sea.
…
(1) CNN – Most Republicans — 59 percent — want the party to become more conservative, according to the poll. Another 28 percent want it to remain about the same ideologically, while only 12 percent would prefer to see the Republican Party become less conservative.
.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
How exactly do folks think their food gets to them?
It is amazing how sheltered Americans are about stuff like this.
Next, Palin should do an interview in front of a garment district sweatshop.
jenniebee
What tickles me about the clip is the juxtaposition of the turkey slaughter with what she’s actually saying. A turkey is blurred out in the background, and she’s standing there talking about how great it is to do something light and fun for a change. Then a new turkey gets brought in and the guy slits its throat, and as he’s holding it and it’s kicking and draining, she says that the campaign trail was just so "brutal" and everybody was always being so critical (I know, right? The press are just killers!) I’m trying to think of a sound/image mix with a higher contrast. This one, maybe.
Joshua Norton
For sure. "Lipstick on a pig", anyone?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I agree, and, while I unfortunately considered muses to be the same sort of "to their destruction" evil guide, I see where I meant siren and not muse (I always called them muses, not sure why).
Singing about dead babies (abortion), she leads them to their demise. Sounds about right. Ha!
jenniebee
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
I don’t get the abortion interpretation on that one. I’m pretty sure it’s a folk song, originating with African-American slaves.
JGabriel
@jenniebee:
Jenniebee, that video is MSNBC’s censored version. The video as it originally aired on the affiliate’s local news broadcast featured no such cleansing for its audiences finer sensibilities.
.
lovethebomb
After you rotiserrie or grill your meat, saute a big pile of onions and bell peppers in olive oil, add a dash of tobasco and then stir in cubes of the pre-cooked meat. Get yourself a pile of warmed tortillas, a side of frijoles, guacamole and cheese/sour cream and you’re good to go.
Tymannosourus
I honestly think, though, that complaints like these burn up our capital on the real stuff.
Most of this ridicule and criticism should be saved for Minority Whip Cantor.
Whenever. He. Talks.
Desmond
It’s not so much the terrible slaughter of the poor defenseless turkeys that gets me, but her complete disconnect from what is going on behind her. Not the best photo op, Sarah. Quite apart from the turkey-killing, something else that bothered me was her inane answer to this question:
"Gettin’ through the budget process that we’re going through right now"? "Building this team that is currently being built"?
Christ, she makes W. sound like an English professor.
Conservatively Liberal
What is there that’s not funny about this? One recently slaughtered (politically) turkey is pardoning another turkey while the rest of the turkeys are slaughtered in the background.
She. Is. Tone. Deaf.
Is that coop or co-op? Don’t tell me that you prefer to choke your own chicken. ;)
The Moar You Know
Literal red meat for the base, that’s all this is. May she vanish into obscurity quickly.
Joshua Norton
It’s an SNL skit that writes itself.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Jennie,
Laying bones on alabaster stones is a metaphor for sacrificing babies. "Didn’t leave nobody but the baby".
The entire song is about telling a baby to "go to sleep" and leaving it behind. Think about it.
Why would you lay a baby on Alabaster Stones?
Of course, right-wingers who believe God is the designer of all that happens also seem to consider abortion to be a sacrifice to an evil god, not that it’s a social construct for those who can’t afford to bring up children, or wish not to for one reason or another.
Personal Designation
Why I can remember running after the killing cone ice cream truck when I was a youngster. Why that was back when sugar was glucose and HFCS was just a glimmer in the power brokers’ eye.
Good for me, and good for anyone who takes a vow. Why I even cook the bird every Thanksgiving Day. I have no problems deboning and carving a turkey. No unmeasured response here, or hyper recalcitrant metaphors, and certainly no judgment, just food for thought. I LQQK across the democracy table with my more than average expected life span. This lets me brush partisan politics aside and embrace my political status of being of the posterity of We The People. I read something funny today >>> So is Hillary really a Marxist backing a socialist? LOL always love the posts here.
Cheers~
Comrade Fwiffo
As a kid I got to see chickens get their heads taken off, and I wasn’t traumatized. I don’t even recall being that bothered by it at the time. It was weird how some of them kept going quite a while after losing their heads. I remember one or two having to be chased down after flapping off into the bushes.
Do turkeys carry on without their heads the way chickens do? Cause they’re pretty big, and I imagine one plowing about headless would be a bit hazardous.
FunkyEntropy
I’m just waiting for some person with greater YouTube powers than my own to take the original video and then layer on some over the top distressed turkey gobbles at the appropriate moments.
That would be the absolute height of comedy.
Again, it’s not the fact that turkeys are being slaughtered by the thousands. It’s the fact that she saved one turkey and then blithely stood there chatting while all the others were sent to their doom. It was a pure Palin moment.
p.a.
I agree pretty poor optics, but what the hell… they don’t chloroform them y’know. Grew up two blocks from a small slaughterhouse- with a rendering plant conveniently across the street from it. One of my earliest memories is the lowing of the steers in the trucks on their way in. There was a small pond behind it we played hockey on. The sights and sounds were quite an eye opener for 6 and 7 year old kids. Once in a while the hogs would get out of the surprisingly poorly built pens and wander onto the ice. Funny shit, but those suckers were mean. Used to have to beat them away with hockey sticks. My mother used to go to buy the offal for various disgusting Italian dishes; pig’s feet, soffrito, tripe etc. Never touched the stuff. Wish she were still around to make it now.
Wow. It’s not just a blog. It’s free therapy!
OriGuy
I bet you’re at the Fish Market. I’ve never been to the one in San Diego, but they all have the same decor. Let’s not get into a discussion about good fish and bad fish. I love shark and swordfish; eating them makes me feel like an oil company executive.
ArkansasTraveler
I couldn’t care less about how the turkeys die – it’s the fact that she’s so idiotic as to think it makes a perfectly fine backdrop for an interview. That and the blithering idiocy that comes out of her mouth. Yet some people seem to be completely delusional about why she is panned – blaming media bias. THE WOMAN CAN’T SPEAK IN COMPLETE SENTENCES! She has shown no depth of thought, ever. If she is the future of the Republican party, that party is in horribly sad shape.
bago
Da cone of Poimanent Silence.
Penny Lane
The Turkeys were ASSASSINATED cuz they wanted to secede from the United States.
I imagine next month she’ll be field dressing a dead moose while her 7 year-old kid Piper watches Bullwinkle and Rocky on the SUV’s LCD monitor in the background.
A Squirrel
I’m pretty much with Henley.
And yes, mostly because it’s "Grange You Can Believe In" FTW of blog post titles on this subject.
postmodernprimate
I thought it was perfect. Maybe it should be the required background for any elected official’s statements. Government as sausage factory in vivid technicolor.
JGabriel
The Moar You Know:
Given that we’re talking turkey, the "red meat" is really not so "literal".
.
JGabriel
Joshua Norton:
Of course. It relies on one of the oldest comedy tricks in the world: upstaging. Palin was completely upstaged by that dying turkey, upside-down, head chopped off, blood pouring out of it’s severed gullet, legs pumping spastically in the air…
All SNL has to do is repeat the performance, with even more absurd violence in the background.
.
Jennifer
The Palin thing is hilarious. Her cluelessness runneth over.
As for the poor animals being slaughtered, I’m with others who think they taste mighty good. Everything dies and probably an animal at the slaughterhouse has fewer moments of terror than an animal caught by a predator. My thing is that I don’t want to support an industry that treats the animals inhumanely while they are alive. I have little problem with slaughterhouses but a very big problem with feedlots. Animals weren’t meant to be machines, but that’s what industrial agriculture does to them – denies their biological needs in favor of quick fattening and higher profit. Thankfully there are now a lot of small farmers you can buy from directly – that’s where I get all my meat, from folks who raise the steers, chickens, turkeys, and pigs on pasture their whole lives.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
"LOL" and "Truth" all in a few short sentences.
JGabriel
Testing…
Er, um, did I did something wrong?
None of my posts seem to be, well, posting.
This is my fifth post, no dupes, since my last visible post around 8:45 PM.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII apparently saw my 9:30, since he/she quotes from it, but the post itself is no longer there.
Help me! I’m being disappeared!
Testing… Can anyone else see this?
.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
There’s sure a lot of good, rich comedy material in this thread.
My Hat would be off to you if my ass weren’t stuck in it.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
Yeah…Perfect…
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
Agreed. I think upon reading "The Jungle" was when I first realized books could make a difference.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The Republican Party must remind you of your childhood.
cay
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/pictures-that-make-rude-pundit-feel.html
Bikelib
I’m as progressive as they come. I’ve been around slaughter operations. None of it bothers me in the least. I’ll take my steak medium-well; and my burgers with a hint of pink in the middle.
ninerdave
On a completely different subject,
The 18th marked the 30th anniversary of Jonestown and the 27th the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. 1978 was a rough year in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Karl
Hilarious blog entry by a father teaching his son to kill chickens in the killing cones. The father proudly says,
"I would not have dreamed of doing this sort of thing when I was 11 years old, and your average modern boy would not do something like this. But, thankfully, my son is not an average modern boy. He has no problem with this part of the process. In fact, he was chatting with the birds and contentedly singing songs from Vacation Bible School while slitting the throats."
That last line is something I imagine Palin doing: "contentedly singing songs from Vacation Bible School while slitting the throats."
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a394/BobBifter/jamesprocessing2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/08/processing-chickens-with-my-son.html&usg=__vAd1faf8rA0SDg7yspQ7Q9Ymq-k=&h=342&w=512&sz=40&hl=en&start=7&um=1&tbnid=nS0tDVY81DUzKM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkilling%2Bcones%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7ADBF_enUS300%26sa%3DN
Conservatively Liberal
Agreed on the steak but when it comes to hamburger, I want that cow dead. If it moos, it goes back.
The slaughter don’t bother me a bit, shit happens. Top of the food chain and all that crap, though it would be interesting to watch someone who is lost in the wilderness explain that to a hungry mountain lion or grizzly bear.
I have a feeling that they wouldn’t listen for long.
Tymannosourus
@Bikelib:
Seconded. I’ve been a hunter all of my life, and none of it has ever bothered me.
flounder
My idea for public office has been to advocate that it should be mandated that every kid should have to kill and eat an animal (I was thinking along the lines of rabbits) as part of high school (or go through some time "volunteering" as a migrant farm worker if they want to be vegetarian).
My reasoning is that a bunch of bullshit stems from the fact we are disenfranchised from the food chain by eating out of paper bags all the time, and that might stem that to a slight degree.
The rest I would make up as I go along.
Sadly, I have never ran.
Jim Treacher
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse:
When do you start?
Chuck Butcher
I had a roast the other night, a venison roast. I’m pretty well acquainted with how it made it onto my dinner plate since I stalked it, shot it, gutted it, skinned it, butchered it, and wrapped it, and then I cooked it. All that said, I didn’t take movies to show the nation.
I do have to wonder if Alaskans bargained for a continual SNL skit from the Gov.
ninerdave
Exactly what bullshit? And I believe disengaged would be a better term than disenfranchised.
ninerdave
@Chuck Butcher:
That said SNL sure has sucked since the election’s been over.
MNPundit
It’s funny because she’s talking about Pardoning a turkey when the turkies (turkeys?) are getting killed behind her. I am a little concerned because it appears that the procedures used may be so unsafe as to create a human health risk at the consumer end.
Look, I have no illusions about how food gets to me. And I don’t give a flying fuck about cruelty to animals, left to my own devices I would love to see animals fight to the death to my amusement. Particularly cats. I hate cats.
HOWEVER, all such practices should be banned or at least tightly regulated. I support this because the practices promote an unsafe environment that creates health risks to humanity and that I can’t countenance. For instance I love cock fighting, but it needs to banned because it is an excellent vector to spread Avian Flu.
Eric U.
I sense a scandal here, I’ll bet the turkey she pardoned gets put back in line for the cone of death. So it was a 15 minute pardon.
matt
@Comrade Fwiffo. I was also unbothered by decapitated chickens as a boy. But just earlier this year I learned that, though the adults thought this was something the kids should see, they themselves were rather sickened by it, and many of the mothers couldn’t bring themselves to eat chicken for weeks.
Kids are much more heartless than we give them credit for.
Batocchio
It’s dark comedy. She pardoned a turkey (apparently filthy) shortly before, talking about how she’s a friend to all creatures great and small (wolf paws, anyone?), and in this clip is prattling cheerfully away while turkeys are being slaughtered in the background.
I’m with you about people who eat turkeys and are shocked by the killing. But that while this clip may not be Les Nessman-Herb Tarlek turkey funny, it’s darkly funny, and I’d like to see The Daily Show segment for this one.
Michael D.
Ahhhh, while I agree she could have chosen a better backdrop – like having the turkey visit the governor’s mansion to be pardoned – really, the only real bad thing to come out of this interview was how it made you feel, wasn’t it?
I know it wasn’t her intent (or maybe it was!) but what is inappropriate about showing you how that turkey you are going to (gobble) up for dinner got to your table? I would love every kid in the world to see the process that the delicious burger or hotdog they’re eating was put through. I think they NEED to see the pigs and cattle herded into slaughterhouses and pressed into meat grinders. Personally, I think it is good to see things like this as it would have very positive effects.
I am going to my cousin’s house for dinner on Thursday. He’s frying a turkey. I’ll be eating veggie like I have been for months, thankyouverymuch.
Only thing I’m killing for that dinner is the pumpkin I’m using to make the pumpkin cheesecake.
The worst part of the interview was how much the guy in the background seemed to be enjoying what he was doing.
Michael D.
I highly recommend Matthew Scully’s book, Dominion, for those who are interested in a thoughtful take on animal welfare. Scully is a conservative Republican. He used to be a speechwriter for Bush, and wrote speeches for Palin and McCain on the trail. I say that only to point out that not all animal welfare activists are on the left. From Library Journal:
I highly recommend it as well. It is, without question, one of the best, nmost life changing books, I have ever read.
movie fan
It’s a subliminal scare-tactic… a warning to all who oppose Sarah Palin’s bid for presidency in 2012
MR. Bill
I grew up on a farm in the mountains of North Carolina, and we killed hogs, chickens, cattle, and the occasional deer. It’s not a nice business, but if you want (say) country ham (and I would now kill for the ham my drunken hillbilly grandad cured, the ones I spurned for the store bought stuff), it’s what you do. The whole family would get involved in the process..I think my ‘aha’ moment on why pigs are considered nasty was when we had four to ‘process’, the first was shot in the head, then strung up (by the hamstrings, or rear tendons) and its throat slashed to bleed it.
The other pigs would fight to drink the blood, pooling and freezing in the cold winter air. And don’t get me started on poultry. Chickens are what happened to T. Rex (no, not the blogger or Marc Bolan’s band) and would cheerfully eat you given the chance. Werner Fassbinder said "You can know that Evil is Stupidity, when you look into the eyes of a chicken."
I am punished now by having a vegan daughter who obsessively reads every label ("I can’t eat that! It has Sodium CASENATE in it!! "). Not that I mind some tofu, but dang.
It was it Burroughs, or Ginsburg who said "let them see what’s on the end of that long newspaper spoon.."?
PaulW
I think that people are upset that:
1) Palin went out of her way to pardon a turkey, and then was clueless enough to stand in front of that carnage and appear utterly clueless as to what was happening behind her. A smarter pol would have gone near an open pen of happy, chuckling turkeys that weren’t getting their heads lopped off
2) For all the meat that we eat, we’ve gotten ourselves into the illusion that meat isn’t murder, because so many of us don’t have to kill and strip our dinners anymore. The last person in my family who lived like that was my Grandma Kinzer. I can still remember her gutting the fish I caught when I was 8 and cooked it same as she did anything else for dinners. Today, I have a hard time going by the lobster tank at the Publix without feeling guilty about those poor things.
atari age
John, I think most people glommed onto this video not because it was "gross" or "awful".
It’s because it was soooooo "STUPID". Which just kept in line with her performance in the general campaign.
And frakking side-splittingly hilarious.
I mean, of course, a lot of people don’t like seeing slaughterhouses but yes, that’s how it gets here.
The politically stupid part is that any other person – politician, movie star, newscaster, you, I, etc – would turn around and go, "Oh! Um, can we restart this with a less… er… gory background. I’m sure people don’t want to see this when eating their breakfast."
But, not her, nope, nothing at all here to take away from my important message, nope, all eyes are gonna be on me, you betchya.
And the delicious irony that she just did the pardoning (which they all do, I think) just made it funnier.
When I see the guy drag away the first bird, head flopping and all… oh my god I almost screamed laughing. Like anyone was even going to listen to her after that. Priceless.
Krista
That’s one thing I do really appreciate about having moved to the sticks. You can actually see the farms, and talk to the farmers, and see in what kind of conditions their livestock is kept. I’ve always been a bit morally conflicted over eating meat, but it’s easier to reconcile it when I know the animals are able to munch grass in the fields, under blue skies, and that when they are killed, it’s quick and humane.
I had my mom over and served a free-range chicken, and she said that it was what chicken USED to taste like, when she was a little girl. That was enough of an endorsement for me. The mass-produced feedlot stuff? I barely consider that food anymore. Tasteless, watery, and the FSM only knows what kind of nasties might be in that meat.
Dennis - SGMM
I never minded taking the bird’s head off or bleeding the carcass. I damn sure hated plucking the things. Even after you scalded the carcass to loosen the feathers it was still a tedious pain in the ass.
rachel
@Dennis – SGMM: It’s way easier to just skin the birds. Or skin most of them, and pluck a few for roasting, if you must have some for that.
Dennis - SGMM
@rachel:
Good hint. Unfortunately, family insisted on having the skin – and don’t get me started on having to do all of the above plus pick out the buckshot in order to "enjoy" greasy roast duck.
Andy
The shocking part is not what actually happens to turkeys just before Thanksgiving — most folks either know, or can pretty well guess — what’s shocking is that the governor didn’t have a the sense not to stand directly in front of someone actually slaughtering the birds. That’s deeply, abidingly teh stoopid, and that’s what’s funny.
Seriously, even when the president "pardons" the White House turkey, they do it in the friggin’ Rose Garden.
D-Chance.
Whoop-dee-doo.
When I was a kid, my next door neighbor, and old farmer who still maintained a half-dozen acres with a couple of cows and a flock of chicken, culled a hen for each Thanksgiving and Christmas. No killing cone; he stretched their necks on a wood stump and did them in with an ax. Watching a headless chicken running/half-flying across the pasture for the first time was a bit traumatic; but the dinner afterwards was the best I’d ever experienced.
God, what wusses… I’m so glad it was that farmer’s and his fathers’ generations who founded and expanded this country, and fought the truly big wars. Because it’s obvious that our current generation would never have been up to the task.
ksmiami
And what is more stoopid is that this woman is who a large part of the Repubs think is the frontrunner in 2012!
HA HA HA HA
mantis
The uproar is silly, but the scene does quite effectively display the absurdity of "pardoning" a turkey. Some pol visits a turkey farm, declares one turkey safe from becoming Thanksgiving dinner, and the bird just get slaughtered a week later.
I guess it does have one benefit in that kids may wonder where their food comes from. Most kids not familiar with farms don’t make the connection between the food on their plate and the animals whose names they’ve learned. You should know what you are eating, and how it got there.
joe from Lowell
I agree with Atari Age; this was a hoot, not an atrocity.
Smooth, Governor Palin. Real Smoove.
Some of the yelping is overwrought (absent the vegetarians, who may yelp freely), but my reaction was to just shake my head at yet another example of Sarah Palin gliding cluelessly through another media debacle.
Nice visuals, Sarah. Just perfect. That’s a wrap, everybody.
Duros Hussein 62
Am I the only one more concerned about her murder of grammar and complete disregard for the lives of lowly puncuation?
As a wise man once said: "Bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good."
Craig
Understand that this was the raw, unedited news footage from KTUU-TV in Alaska, which "somehow" got released to the general public. This was not the actual news report that was aired. And yes, for what its worth here, a spokesperson said that when the shot was set up with Palin, the grim reaper was not yet doing his thing. So when she initially remarked that the background shot was fine, it was just a turkey house with a table in front. The cameraman refused to change his shot once the filming had started.
They ended up cleaning the final report up during the editing process.
ksmiami
Craig:
My bet is that the elite Republicans – corporate cons and Romney will destroy Palin within 6 months… not that she isn’t good at destroying herself though when she opens her mouth.
Brain Hertz
I’m not even slightly disturbed by the scene, I just thought the whole thing was hysterically funny. I kind of get the impression that most other people had about the same reaction. I haven’t seen anything that suggests "uproar" about it.
The best line I heard was one of the late night talkies (forget which) commenting about the turkeys being subjected to having to listen to Sarah Palin, and screaming "kill me next!"
Sue Hendrix
My husband brought up Mike the Headless chicken, who may be apropos. MIke the Headless Chicken lived for 18 months after being prepared for dinner.
Michael Brown
If you are unwilling to butcher it yourself, you really have no business eating meat.
Most Americans have the same dishonest relationship with death that they have with sex.
Glenn
I kept thinking as I watched, why somebody didn’t grab her by the legs and stick her stupid ass head into one of those things and bleed her out.
MBL
The trick is, Michael, there is virtually no one anywhere who WON’T actually butcher their own meat if it were actually necessary. The idea that modern people are too soft to be their own butchers is PETA-inspired nonsense. It’s a matter of convenience, not morals.
Brain Hertz
I’m with MBL. Michael, what are you talking about? Where does this notion that people are "not prepared" to butcher their meat come from?
Also:
Can you translate? I have no idea what this means.
Michael Brown
You guys must be putting me on.
MBL: I have no brief for PETA. I’ve met thousands of Americans who are horrified at the mere idea of killing animals, let alone cutting them up and eating them. Not to mention lacking the first clue on how to go about doing any of the aforementioned.
BH: Most Americans pretend that death is not messy, important, part of their daily lives, or a topic for public discussion. A large fraction of them would like to pretend it doesn’t even exist. Precisely like sex.
MBL
@Michael Brown: My point is that every single one of those "horrified" people is going to learn how to kill animals REAL QUICK once it becomes necessary to slaughter a turkey to feed their kids. If America were to suddenly abruptly transition to a subsistence food environment, yeah, we’d probably have mass starvation– but it wouldn’t be because nobody was willing to kill the widdle pweddy wabbits or the moo cows. Those of you who grew up on farms and are used to this are not biologically different from city folk. You are USED TO IT, and that’s the one and only difference. The first time suburban housefrau meat comes from packages lady has to kill something to feed her kids, she’s gonna have to close her eyes, yeah. But I imagine so did the farmer’s kids. After that? It ain’t nothing but making dinner.
Tim in SF
@Comrade Jake@30:
It’s 50% a scene from a Coen Brothers movie, 50% a scene from a David Lynch film, and half a bottle of gin.