Originally published in The Alliance Review in 2008.
It’s one of life’s little imponderables. Either way, the turkey is a bird that needs some positive PR. Unlike beef and chicken, it has no fast-food representation. There is no McTom, no BK Gobbler, no Turkey McNuggets value meal.
Instead, the language is rife with negative turkey connotations. Everybody’s dated at least one turkey, and people who “gobble” up food are considered hogs (another animal that needs spin control). Hearing “tough turkey” means you’re not getting your way, and the loser of a fight is trussed up or stuffed like a turkey. Synonyms for turkey include failure, dud, bomb, washout and fiasco.
About the only positive reference comes in bowling, where three consecutive strikes earns the roller a “turkey,” but he’s still, you know, bowling, so how cool can it be, really?
To be fair, nobody likes being called a chicken or a cow, either, but at least both those animals are adequately represented on the dinner menu at home or in restaurants. Outside of a 6-inch turkey breast at sub shops or the rare turkey burger on health-food menus, old Tom is the least respected of the meats.
No, the turkey gets one blip on the public radar, November, when the White House issues a presidential pardon for one of his brethren, but 45,999,999 more go under the ax to serve as the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving meals. According to the Associated Press, shoppers won’t get a break on the bird at the grocery store, either: The average cost of a 16-pound bird is up $1.46 over last year.
The eagle, meanwhile, protected as he is by federal law, gets all the positive euphemisms – eagle eyes, Eagle Scout, legal eagle, and double eagle. A five-dollar gold piece issued from 1795 to 1916 and in 1929 is a half eagle, which even sounds weighty, and the bird is all over money and stationary, portrayed as strong, powerful – and inedible. Maybe we have a psychological need to mock in language the animals we eat.
Ben Franklin, however, had no love for the eagle. In a letter to his daughter, he wrote, “… I wish the eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the eagle pursues him and takes it from him.
“With all this injustice, he is never in good case but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: The little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district.”
Later in the same letter, Franklin praises the turkey as “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”
Given many Americans belief in entitlement, or taking something for nothing, maybe the eagle as described by Franklin isn’t such a bad symbol after all.
Maybe the rest of us, who work everyday and hand over our eagle-imprinted money to those who don’t, are the real turkeys. It’s another imponderable to consider this Thanksgiving.
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