Name Those Turkeys!

Perhaps you already know, if only from watching West Wing reruns, that every year around this time the U.S. president publicly spares the life of two turkeys that otherwise would become Thanksgiving dinner. But perhaps you didn't know that the public is invited to choose the gobblers' names. This year's options (from the evidence, possibly selected by bored White House interns):

Wing & Prayer

May & Flower

Gobbler & Rafter*

Wish & Bone

Truman & Sixty

Jake & Tom

Via Whatever It Is I'm Against It, who says these choices are even less creative than those of years past and who offers his own pair of sobriquets: Water & Board.

By the way, "Truman" and "Sixty" have their origin in the widely publicized story that President Harry S Truman was the first president to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey, in 1947 ( i.e., 60 years ago). However, Snopes lays that claim to rest. Truman did receive a turkey that year, but it arrived on Dec. 15, in time for Christmas, not Thanksgiving. And there are no records of any presidential poultry pardons that year. On the contrary, Truman seems to have mentioned to reporters that he planned to eat the gift.

Snopes continues:

Surprisingly, the tradition which now everyone remembers as having gone on forever apparently began with President George H.W. Bush in 1989. At that year's Thanksgiving presentation of a bird for the First Family's table, in his remarks to those assembled, he said, "But let me assure you--and this fine tom turkey--that he will not end up on anyone's dinner table. Not this guy. He's been granted a presidential pardon as of right now, allowing him to live out his days on a farm not far from here."

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* A "rafter" is a flock of turkeys.

Comments

[Jessica]

Names of turkeys? At the White House? To be pardoned? Scooter and Libby, of course. Or Halliburton and Blackwater? Fredo and Turdblossom? Why, now that you mention it, it's an easy task!

[Nancy Friedman]

Turdblossom would be a fine name for the presidential turducken, don't you think?