The Presidential Turkey Pardon is one of the long running American traditions that many people have come to see as nothing more than the continuation of a little harmless fun injected into an otherwise serious job. But nothing could be farther from the truth. History is rife with examples of turkeys being pardoned for purely political reasons who then go on to commit truly heinous acts. It’s time that we stop turning a blind eye to the crimes of these hateful beasts and hold them accountable.
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson issued a commutation of the sentence of George B Wellfeathered, a member of the Socialist Party and known turkey who had been convicted under the Espionage Act. After being released from prison George immediately sought passage out of America, eventually succeeding by stowing away aboard an Italian merchant ship. After a series of failed business ventures in various European cities left him on the run from debtors, he found himself wandering the streets of Sarajevo. On June 28, 1914 he just fuckin’ parked his dumb turkey ass right in the middle of a main road and refused to move even when horses and automobiles threatened to run him over. In the ensuing roadblock, nearby assassin Gavrilo Princip stepped up to the stopped car and killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in what is widely known to be the inciting incident to the first World War. Had George still been serving his life sentence in Federal Turkey Prison and not been blocking traffic that day, it’s likely Princip never would have had his second chance and history would be vastly different.
As one of his final acts before resigning the office of the Presidency in 1974, Richard Nixon pardoned a villain. Few of the horrible creatures we call turkeys are ever born with the mental capacity to understand human language, let alone speak it with their useless beaked mouths, but on those rare occasions, it is policy for the United States government to intervene. Such was the case of Jeffrey Plumply. To protect our society from his silver tongue, Jeffrey was to be incarcerated for life at the Butterball, LLC Maximum Security Prison for Turkeys in North Carolina, until being freed by President Nixon as a last stroke of retribution upon a nation that had turned against him. He had become a household name during the widely publicized five month trial leading up to his prison sentence, and so to hide his identity, he underwent extensive plastic surgery and assumed an alias: Jim Jones. Unburdened by his past, Jeffrey was able to use his gift of gab to form a cult following which ended in the tragedy of the Jonestown Massacre, more commonly known as Nixon’s Revenge. We accept the axiom that power corrupts, yet we still leave the temptation in the hands of every President to unleash these fiends on the world.
During the Presidency of James K. Polk, the westward expansion of the United States reached all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but the pace of western migration only increased at his eager encouragement. Polk famously offered pardons to any and all convicted felons who promised to take their new freedom to the western territories, an offer accepted by the turkey Samuel Simpleton in 1845. Samuel set off for California the same day as his release, but was never known to have reached that destination. In the next year, a group of several families began their own journey to California, led by a man named George Donner. The Donner Party’s deviation from the Oregon Trail in favor of a supposed shortcut ultimately brought them to a Sierra Nevada mountain pass route blocked by an angry turkey. Samuel had never finished his travel to California; he had been distracted by some leaves blowing around and just kinda forgot what he was doing and stayed there forever like a total dipshit. His small, idiotic turkey brain decided that this was, and had always been his home during his short time in isolation, so when the Donner Party approached, he became infuriated at what he perceived as an incursion into his own land. Any members of the Party attempting to pass him were attacked by beak and talon, and he simply refused to move out of the way of their wagons. For six months the Donner Party was trapped, many dying of starvation or resorting to cannibalism to survive. The remaining members of the Party were able to escape when Samuel drowned in the nearby lake because he forgot what water was and just walked directly into it and stood there until he was dead.
There’s one turkey that just idly wanders around the major streets of my city during rush hour and stands around staring at the cars honking and inching towards him like he’s immune to vehicle damage, and I don’t have evidence to back it up, but I strongly suspect that he’s the one Trump pardoned in 2019 and I fuckin’ hate that guy. Both of them, actually.
UPDATE: WNV has recently been made aware of several new possible pardoned turkey criminals, and we will be examining them tirelessly to reveal the truth in our next investigative post: Joseph Gobbles, John Wayne Bastey, Poultry Amin, and Ghislane Maxwell.