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    near Washington DC. They were later quietly killed there,

    as their under-engineered legs would soon succumb to the

    weight of their bloated bodies.

    But from 2005 George W. Bush started instead to

    send the birds to Disneyland in Florida by first-class

    domestic flight.2 There, the National Turkey was placed

    on top of a special parade float moving through cheering

    Thanksgiving crowds, preceded by a procession holding

    banners declaring him the happiest turkey on earth. A

    Disney company press release unabashedly presented the

    turkey event as Following presidential pardon, the hap-

    piest turkey on earth heads west to the happiest place on

    earth!3 (This was in 2006, when the turkeys were flown to

    the California Disneyland in order to spread the grace). In

    his first turkey pardon in November 2009, Obama simply

    went along with this novelty, and apparently also with the

    alternation between the East and West coast Disneylands,

    where the spectacle is rounded off with the retirement of

    the twin turkeys to a Disney animal ranch on which they

    meet their ultimate fate.

    The audacious remake of the last leg of the nationalpardoning ritual under George W. Bush (fig. 2) must

    have something to do with the way in which Disneyland

    epitomizes the pursuit of happiness believed to drive the

    American nation, already so happy that it even hosts the

    happiest place on earth. The idea of reanchoring the

    turkey ritual in the unassailably all-American setting of

    Disneyland may have been, in part, an attempt by White

    House spin doctors to outwit and overcome the previous

    years nagging criticism from PETA, the animal rights

    activist organization, of both the unfortunately named

    Frying Pan arrangements and the associated slaughter

    of millions of turkeys. But there is more. The Disneyland

    dream world figures in the American self-imaginary as

    a fountain of happiness, almost a this-wordly paradise.Victorious sportsmen are often awarded a highly publi-

    cized trip there, as a bonus prize. This notion of reward

    for good service is now, morbidly, assigned to the already

    dying National turkeys, extending presidential benevo-

    lence all the way to Disneyland and squeezing out the last

    possible drop of spectacular exhibition-value (Agamben

    2007: 90) from these avian heroes of the Thanksgiving

    sacrifice.

    This means that the Thanksgiving ritual is further woven

    into the fabric of the American exceptionalist imaginary

    of manifest destiny of victorious happiness. Note too that

    the public display has its complementary moral mirror

    image in the domestic home setting in which the turkeys

    are cooked and consumed. Much as in the European home-coming ritual of Christmas, the American Thanksgiving is

    a fraught site for the rehearsal of, and challenges to, per-

    In her article on the manifest domesticity which th

    ritual is used to orchestrate, Amy Kaplan (1998; see als

    Kaplan 2002) showed how the original 19th-centur

    invention of Thanksgiving cast home-making America

    mothers and families in a crucial supporting role for th

    nation, just as the US began to assume its imperial pro

    ject. Founding mother Sarah Josepha Hale designed th

    Thanksgiving ritual as a nationwide contemporaneou

    celebration that would consolidate the nation and its con

    tinental conquests (up to the Rio Grande, and all the wa

    to the Pacific [quoted in Kaplan 1998: 592]), encourag

    its mission into the Philippines and beyond, and later, in

    the tired Cold War phrase, confirm its status as leader o

    the free world.

    Kaplan exposed the imperial scope of America

    domesticity as instituted in the 19th-century fashioning o

    the Thanksgiving holiday which starts on cue from th

    acting sovereign (Lincoln, Bush, Obama), and helps con

    stitute him as such. All this is still with us, as American

    mothers and fathers dutifully continue to cook their tur

    keys and perform Thanksgiving as a quintessentiallAmerican ritual and family feast. Even when they do thi

    privately, without reflecting on its history or its implica

    tions for the state, the success of Hales scheme since i

    was formally adopted by Lincoln in 1863 is fundamenta

    and lasting.

    Since that time, each president exhorts the citizenry t

    give thanks and asks for divine blessing for the nation

    in his annual Thanksgiving Proclamation, at the ensuin

    turkey pardon, and also by way of the exemplary, publ

    cized presidential domesticity that often includes publica

    tion of dinner menus, and in the 2009 Obama configuratio

    added visits to soup kitchens for the poor.

    Despite todays multicultural inclusiveness, an

    Obamas pointed gestures towards the Native Americanand towards the hungry, the Thanksgiving ritual remain

    fundamentally associated with the mainstream, whic

    means the White Anglo-Americans of the paradigmati

    Plymouth Mayflower Pilgrims, and emphatically no

    the Indians or the descendants of Africans brought to th

    US as slaves. As Kaplan (1998) notes, Sarah Josepha Hale

    the architect of the American Thanksgiving, believe

    (like many others) that after the end of slavery, Africa

    descendants should have been repatriated to Africa (spe

    cifically, to Liberia),4 and not allowed to remain alongsid

    the Whites or at least ought to be segregated. The per

    during category of mainstream is to be understood as a

    accommodation of such lingering nostalgia for purity.

    As Kaplan goes on to point out, the Indians were altogether absent from Hales original construction, as the

    were from many early settler accounts of Thanksgivings

    Fig. 2. President George

    W. Bush pardons a turkey,

    20 November 2007. (Photo:

    Joyce N. Boghosian, courtesy

    George W. Bush Presidential

    Library.)

    Fig. 3. President George

    H.W. Bush Senior with

    pardoned turkey, 1991.

    (Photo courtesy George H.W.

    Bush Presidential Library.)

    promoted the joy of their

    park by contrasting footage

    from a synchronized Indian

    pow-wow drum dance,

    intended to suggest utter and

    incomprehensible boredom,

    with that of select happy

    roller-coaster revellers at their

    easy-going park. For images,

    see http://www.10news.com/

    news/5402133/detail.html, or

    http://www.disneydreaming.

    com/2009/11/27/courage-

    the-turkey-in-the-disneyland-

    thanksgiving-day-parade-video/ (accessed 7 June

    2010).

    4. Her hope was that

    Thanksgiving Day would be

    used for collecting money

    in churches, for this very

    purpose (Kaplan 1998).

    5. The reappropriation

    of the image of the Indian

    included fantasies of a

    gentler, kinder, American-

    styled imperialism, such

    as that immortalized in the

    huge tripartite statue at the

    main gate of the American

    Museum of Natural History in

    New York, depicting its main

    patron, President TheodoreRoosevelt, on horseback

    leading an African and an

    Indian man on foot, one on

    each side.

    6. Unsurprisingly,

    vegetarian campaigns

    initiated for health reasons

    by governors like Michigan

    governor Jennifer Granholm,

    who declared 20 March

    2010 Michigan Meatout

    Day, or Tennessee governor

    Lamar Alexander, who

    once proclaimed a World

    Vegetarian Day, have been

    hard fought, and defeated, by

    the meat industry lobby. See

    photos of Ford, Nixon and

    others at: http://georgewbush-

    whitehouse.archives.gov/

    h lid /th k i i /

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    tiny (cf. Fiskesj 2003). Hale must have assumed this

    solution was safely under way. It appears that it was only

    in the late 19th-century period of triumphant imperialism

    that the Indians were painted into the nowadays so familiar

    and ubiquitous renderings of the first Thanksgiving dinner

    (see fig. 5),5 and that it is only with the recent introduction

    of multiculturalism that they have been cast in the express

    supporting role hailed in Obamas 2009 embrace of the

    Native Americans contributions. This sympathetic ges-

    ture cannot possibly clear up the lingering ambivalence

    about the genocidal crimes committed against their fore-

    bears, and should also be analysed as a new version of

    the very mystery of state power that is epitomized in the

    turkey pardon: the awesome power to launch wars and

    take lives is presented to its subjects as coterminous with

    a magnanimous and benign care for the weak, the hungry

    and the marginalized.

    Sarah Palin pallin around with animals

    Another closely related new development was Sarah

    Palins widely reported but woefully under-analysed turkeypardoning fiasco, in late 2008. Palin is a rising political

    star of the right and clearly a US presidential contender,

    mainly by virtue of her demagoguery of frontierswoman

    fantasies, through which she expertly denies the need for

    serious change in the face of climate change and other

    problems facing her country, or the world (cf. Covington

    2009). She is also closely associated with the growing Tea

    Party Movement, whose central Take back our country

    slogan is widely understood to refer to Obama, seen as

    illegitimate because Black.

    Shortly after her defeat as vice-presidential candidate in

    the elections earlier that autumn, in November 2008 Palin

    was still Alaskas governor but already deeply engaged

    in crafting her new position as a political leader definedby nativism and oil-guzzling populism. As if seeking to

    usurp some of the symbolic power about to be handed to

    Obama as commander-in-chief, Palin arranged a visit to a

    turkey farm in Alaska. She was filmed by TV news com-

    panies as she waded through a sea of turkeys waiting to be

    slaughtered, picked one out, and then declared it pardoned

    in a makeshift ceremony (see fig. 4). Like the national cer-

    emony, this was meant to be fun, in all seriousness.

    The turkey pardoning was institutionalized in the late

    1980s as a national presidential ritual, and only very few

    state governors pardon turkeys: it is done, for example,

    in Alabama, where the ceremony was first invented in

    the 1940s as a governors ritual, and from where it was

    exported to the capital in 1947 (Fiskesj 2003). By step-ping into the fray, Palin tries to mock the Washington

    against which states rights are asserted, using the same

    institution of the pardon is a suitable arena for playin

    this sort of game: the power of pardon is the suprem

    sign of sovereign power, deciding over life and death, an

    just such powers are invested in the offices of both U

    presidents and (most) US state governors. Both decide, a

    their respective level, on clemency and the ultimate fat

    of prisoners under death sentence (cf. Sarat 2005), an

    presidents decide on war.

    But, unfortunately for Palin, the cameras kept rolling a

    she was interviewed on other matters against the back

    drop of a spectacle of brutal, mechanized turkey slaughte

    proceeding just behind her. Clips of this event went vira

    on the internet but mainly just the slaughter part of th

    footage and not the preceding pardon (Lester 2008 is

    more complete video; see also the eyewitness account b

    the blogger Celtic Diva, 2008). Instead of helping endea

    her to voters as down-to-earth, rustic and funny, the inc

    dent served to reignite the debate around meat-eating

    vegetarianism, tofu turkey alternatives, and the like, rathe

    than around the turkey pardoning itself, which man

    simply laugh off as a bit of fun.But although the shrewd Palin did not volunteer t

    pardon another turkey in 2009, she quickly seized on he

    curious ability to have everything both ways (and get awa

    with it), to overcome the negative publicity of the 200

    incident. She did this by reaffirming her toughness in th

    face of the necessary and virtuous killing of animals, suc

    as Alaskan wolves, moose, etc., while caring deeply fo

    ordinary Americans. She had established these creden

    tials earlier when she famously bragged about her skill

    in skinning dead moose, and she often poses with dea

    animals.

    This certainly shifted the spotlight back onto Palins vir

    tues including as a folksy inheritor of the longstandin

    tradition of manipulating hunting lore for the purposes opolitical power. Such schemes have of course been use

    since ancient times, as when early kings domesticated

    their subjects-to-be by asserting a position as hunter-in

    chief and conqueror of the wild (Fiskesj 2001). Man

    later reigning or would-be kings and presidents hav

    played this game in the US, not least the paradigmati

    turn-of-the-century big game hunter President Frankli

    Roosevelt (Haraway 1993, Fiskesj 2003), who in hi

    other guise as wildlife preservationist managed to harnes

    the symbolic force of both life-preserving beneficence an

    martial readiness, as the archetypal American-style benig

    yet fearsome imperial sovereign who loves his people.

    Eagles vs turkeysThe trend for playing politics with birds has been superbl

    mocked by US satirical newspaper The Onion (2010

    8. This is somewhat

    morbid, of course, but is

    occasionally also done at the

    state level when governors

    pass on frozen turkeys as

    symbolic gifts to homeless

    shelters, etc.

    9. As was suggested

    by one of the anonymous

    reviewers for this article, to

    whom I am grateful for urging

    me to consider these aspects.

    I also thank Pete Richardson

    for sharing his profoundinsights on several points, and

    the Editor for precious help,

    not least with illustrations.

    Agamben, Giorgio 2007. In

    praise of profanation. In

    Profanations, pp. 73-92.

    New York: Zone Books.

    Bergland, Renee 2000. The

    national uncanny: Indian

    ghosts and American

    subjects. Hanover, NH:

    University Press of New

    England.

    Celtic Diva 2008. I watched

    Governor Palins turkey

    pardoning! (with

    pictures). Update 3,20 November. http://

    divasblueoasis.com/

    showDiary.do?diaryId=320

    (accessed 7 June 2010).

    Clifford, James 1988.

    Identity in Mashpee.

    In The predicament of

    culture: Twentieth century

    ethnography, literature,

    and art, pp. 277-346.

    Cambridge, MA: Harvard

    University Press.

    Covington, Coline 2009.

    What deniers of climate

    change are really denying.

    The First Post, 17

    December. Available at:

    http://www.thefirstpost.

    co.uk/57532,news-

    comment,news-

    li i h h d i

    Fig. 4. Sarah Palin, script

    in hand, with her pardoned

    turkey in Wasilla, Alaska,

    20 November 2008. (Photo:

    Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.)

    Fig. 5. The first thanks-

    giving, by Jean Leon Gerome

    Ferris, from the series The

    pageant of a nation (c. 1912-

    15). Image reproduced from

    a postcard published by The

    Foundation Press, Inc., 1932.

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    on the current US wars, because, as he put it, Im not a

    hawk or a dove [] Im an eagle.

    You see, these issues are not so cut and dried, continued the

    Haliaeetus leucocephalus specimen. And yet, every time I try

    to explain myself from atop a flag pole or the middle of a base-

    ball field, no one wants to listen. They just cheer and chant

    U.S.A.! U.S.A! U.S.A.!

    This is counter-intuitively funny precisely because the

    eagle, with its appropriately fierce profile, is a national

    totem of the USA even if it isnt recognized in the terms

    of totemism, which are of course reserved for Native

    Americans and other supposed primitives. James Clifford

    (1988: 321) once observed and recorded a memorablescene of US court proceedings where American Indians

    who had sued to get back their lost territories were taken

    the litigating Indians, as all the while the mighty US eagl

    totem watched from the official courtroom wall insigni

    right above them.

    TheOnion is mocking the symbol of sovereign powe

    but failed to engage the interesting issue of the eagles pre

    sumed gender, as well as the point that (as even Palin

    speechwriters know) the late 18th-century selection o

    this fierce-looking eagle as national totem was oppose

    by Benjamin Franklin, who famously held that the eagl

    in real life is an opportunistic scavenger and the nationa

    bird should really have been the morally upright turkey.Obviously, animals are not just good to think with, bu

    also serve as exemplary materializations of morality use

    to guide and forge a national citizenry. However, Frankli

    lost out. The soaring eagle (which cannot be farmed fo

    food) is manifestly much more suitable for projecting th

    nations outwardly martial and distinctly masculine o

    macho ambitions. The turkey, whose edibility sustains th

    citizens on the domesticated home front, is better suite

    to reaffirming the citizenrys manifest domesticity and it

    unity, around the kitchen table, in grateful support of th

    nations lofty endeavours, and its troops.

    The pardoning ritual as it is pursued today was origi

    nally also a commercial gimmick, invented to promot

    consumption of turkey meat, and accepted into th

    national celebration in part because it highlights the sover

    eigns role in facilitating the sustenance of the people. Th

    National Turkey Federation (NTF) and other commercia

    outfits have long helped promote turkey consumption (an

    their profits) by donating turkeys to the White House (se

    Figs 6, 7 and 8).

    The same logic linking business with state sovereignt

    seems to propel all the recent attempts to adopt the par

    doning ritual formally in Minnesota (said to be the U

    state that raises the largest number of farm turkeys) as we

    as in Missouri, Iowa and North Dakota all agricultura

    states that benefit heavily from increased production an

    consumption of farm-industry meat,

    6

    and where state governors are also often folksy game hunters.

    The apparently seamless marrying of the politica

    cosmological significance of the pardoning act with th

    industry-promoted pursuit of profit derived from con

    sumption and the fun that goes with it is striking and fo

    anthropologists, it should recall A.M. Hocarts half-for

    gotten but highly relevant theories about the co-evolutio

    of economy and governance (see Schnepel 1988). (Th

    NTF for its part must inevitably be worrying about th

    dangers of any politicizing of the Thanksgiving game, a

    this might ruin their fun.)

    Why pardoning pigs wont do

    It is not just birds that are in play, but other animals too. Ithe swing state of Virginia, another new movement is afoo

    demanding that the president should really be pardoning

    pig, not a turkey (Suhay 2007). The argument is founde

    on a claim that not turkey but pork and possibly oysters

    too was eaten at Thanksgiving celebrations in Virgini

    that took place two years earlier than the conventionall

    mythologized Massachussetts First Thanksgiving even

    (in 1621, at Plymouth, where, in any case, venison wa

    probably the main course).

    But regardless of the facts here, the key point is that th

    Thanksgiving holiday was being invented after the defea

    of the separatist Confederate slave states which include

    Virginia, and this is why the Massachussetts event wa

    singled out for mythologization in Lincolns times. Thihistorical divergence means that the Virginian demands

    however strongly pushed by governors, senators and th

    Davis, Kenneth. 2008. A

    French connection.New

    York Times, 26 November:

    A33; http://www.

    nytimes.com/2008/11/26/

    opinion/26davis.html?em

    (accessed 7 June 2010).

    Faludi, Susan 2007.

    Americas guardian

    myths.New York Times,

    7 September. Available

    at: http://www.nytimes.

    com/2007/09/07/

    opinion/07faludi.html

    (accessed 7 June 2010).

    Fiskesj, Magnus 2003.

    The Thanksgiving turkey

    pardon, the death of

    Teddys bear, and the

    i ti f

    Fig. 6. Thanksgiving turkey for the President

    (Herbert Hoover), November 1929.

    Fig. 7. Thanksgiving turkey for the President,

    delivered by Minnesota farmers, November 1929.

    Fig. 8. Thanksgiving turkey crate in the shape of a

    warship, made for President Warren Harding (1921-

    1923) by the Chamber of Commerce in Cuero, Texas,

    home of the Turkey Trot (a then-popular ragtime tune).

    LIBRARY

    OFCONGRESS,USA

    LIBRARY

    OFCONGRESS,USA

    LIBRARY

    OFCONGRESS,USA

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