Every family worth its stuffing and giblets has its Thanksgiving traditions.  Such is the case with mine.  Yours truly in the days of his youth found it the height of amusement to periodically open the oven door, gaze upon the turkey browning inside, and say “gobble gobble gobble” to indicate the bird was not yet ready for consuming.  Once the hopefully not foul fowl would reach its optimum level of dryness (sorry, Mom), it would be transported to the dining room table where my father would masterfully carve the main course while taking as little for himself as possible.  As he oft stated, he ate turkey once a year which was more than good enough for him.  Anyway, the gathered family would give thanks, then commence to set up the betting pool as to which pet owned by which member of said family would be the first to be even more thankful for that time after dinner when the humans would leave the table in favor of the living room but before the remains of dinner would be cleared.  My mother’s dog and/or one of my sibling’s cats would have quite the fine fun time… up to the moment my mother would return to the dining room, catch them in the act, and commence to severely lecture the animal in question.  I still recall listening to her scolding my sister’s cat: “Zonker!  Get off that table!  Quit licking the cream cheese out of those celery stalks!”  Pause.  “Don’t you stick your tongue out at me!”  Always the insolent one, that feline.

Somewhere along the line, the fundamental law that in order to eat meat an animal would be required to give its all came to light.  Not that I ever participated in such activities.  My father was not unaccustomed to hunting, although I don’t recall him ever doing so.  Then again, he had five kids.  When you have one or more urchins requiring a good paddling on a routine basis, as an orderly lot we were not, breaking out the rifle and spending a weekend tracking down game probably seemed a tad excessive since said animal had done far less to annoy you than assorted rugrats rampaging through the domicile.  Best to take out ones frustrations on the source thereof.  Speaking of the referenced corporal punishment, the reason I was spanked far more infrequently than my siblings had nothing to do with me being the baby of the family.  It was because I was so much better than the rest.  Deal, brothers and sister.  But I digress.

Having come to grips with the fact that those hamburgers I craved as a child and still get the occasional honkerin’ for today are composed mostly of ground up burnt dead cow muscle, the recent kerfuffle over Sarah Palin doing her PR duty by pardoning a turkey (no, not Ted Stevens; he doesn’t deserve a pardon and turkeys should strongly protest having their good name sullied by any association with the not nearly soon enough former Senator) at — brace yourself — a turkey farm which believe it or not is a place where turkeys are born and bred as food, thus when it’s time to become dinner the turkeys are killed, is more than a tad amusing.  How do those outraged by this think turkeys get to market?  They’re born fully grown and freshly dead?  That large heavy thing wrapped in white plastic is actually the result of a mad scientist’s experiments with combining soy, steroids, and retired animatronic parrots from the Tiki Room at Disneyland?  Every year just before Thanksgiving, across the land rafters of turkeys commit seppuku?

Let’s face it.  If it wasn’t for the fact it was Sarah Palin filmed by a news crew at the turkey farm, no one save those who saw the story when it was originally broadcast on whichever station would know it exists.  That people are actually freaking about this is a sign of how unhinged the mere mention of Palin’s name makes liberals.  Quite frankly, whenever she’s brought up liberals act like… like…

… turkeys the day before Thanksgiving.