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Nov 28 2008

Resolved that the national bird should be the wild turkey

Op_ed

By Bob Boldt

Translation

Or my post-T-Day message to the nation

William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Plantation, wrote in his journal about the first Thanksgiving of 1621,

"…besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many."

– Gov. William Bradford

The account was written several years after the fact, and whether turkey actually was on the menu that day is not clear. Even if Bradford's memory was faulty, the association of turkey with our holiday feast was born.

"The Turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original Native of America."

– Ben Franklin

Actually the scavenging bald eagle is a perfect symbol for Imperialism– be it Roman or Amerikan. I have always loved the beautifully erotic adornment of the wily, domestic wild turkey.

I have often balked at the pejorative use of the word "turkey" to represent bumbling
incompetence, as in, "Bush is a real turkey" as much as I have in calling someone a "pussy" to represent vacillating weakness and cowardice, as in, "Bush is such a pussy."

I guess the reference to "turkey" probably is more appropriate to the modern genetically bred stupid cousin to the wild original – although most of my fellow citizens have never met a live version of either bird.

This year I (proudly) have been able to successfully resist the temptation to send out my annual pre-Thanksgiving message concerning the real nature of the wicked, genocidal Plymouth Colony, their post T-Day decimation of the natives who befriended them in their hour of greatest need and how they violently drove off the nearby, wiser, more prosperous, tolerant, pagan Maypole builders of the peace loving Merrymount community.

While Puritan Gov. Bradford's recollections of the wild turkey's gracing of the first Thanksgiving table may have been apocryphal, his comments concerning his abject horror upon observing the Merrymount community's revels were not.

"They...set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together, like so many fairies, or furies rather, and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians."

– Gov. William Bradford

Actually what probably pissed off Bradford and Miles Standish even more than these revels was the fact that the members of the Merrymount community were more effective farmers, savvy fur traders and generally making a better go of getting on in the new world than the brutish, hidebound, dull monotheists of the Old Colony.

It definitely sounds like they were my kind of party animals!

This year, I am in a conciliatory mood and prefer just to let my annual reminders concerning the dark origins of this most misunderstood holiday of all, pass without disturbing the post orgy L-tryptophan and carbohydrate metabolism induced slumbers of my fellow countrymen and women with the troubling assertion that, like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving should be a day of sackcloth & ashes, morning,
penance and restitution to the descendants of those few natives who were lucky enough to have escaped our wrath.

This year I prefer to focus upon those many things I am personally thankful for. In the immortal words of Barbara Bush when confronted with the consequences of the atrocities committed by her favorite, beloved son:

"Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

– Barbara Bush

Indeed. Why should I not just focus on being thankful for our new president who has promised to make everything better?

A belated happy T-Day to My Fellow Amerikans.

May you all sleep on in Peace,

Robert Boldt an editor of MWC News, is a freelance film/video producer living in Jefferson City, Missouri. He is active in local politics, worked on the Howard Dean and John Kerry campaigns and is a cofounder of The White Rose Collective. Articles by Bob Boldt at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/bob-boldt

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