"PARDON ME" Unlike one of my former colleagues at the News-Express, I am not partial to television. While she is a couch potato I could be better defined as a mouse potato. However I did happen to have the TV turned on this afternoon and was surprised to learn that this country has a tradition that until today I was not aware of. The president of the United States pardons turkeys ! No not Turkey the country, but turkey the poultry. Harry S. (Give 'em hell Harry) Truman started the tradition of the president pardoning the White House turkey as a gesture of goodwill. As is customary, the president is expected to pardon a turkey... on the eve of Thanksgiving at a White House ceremony. The presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey dates back 50 years and has until this day been a custom of the Whitehouse executive. Now exactly to whom they are showing goodwill escapes me, but who am I to question a 50-year-old tradition ? Rumor has it that when President Clinton pardoned his turkey the Republicans called for the attorney general to appoint an independent counsel to investigate his relationship with the turkey and his motives for the pardon. Although
it is not Thanksgiving eve, with great pomp and circumstance, and full
media coverage, President Bush entered the Rose Garden and pardoned a
turkey named Katie. It seems that Katie was the first female turkey ever
to be pardoned or chosen to be pardoned in the history of the U.S.
On February 24, 2000, Betty Lou Beets, convicted of murdering her husband in 1983, was put to death by lethal injection at 6:18 p.m. CST at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas. Gov. George W. Bush declined to stop it. Beets, who had five children, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, is the oldest person put to death in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982. Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment, has now executed 208 people since then. 154 of these executions occurred during George Bush’s administration as Texas governor.
I guess that we should all count our blessings and be thankful that on this Thanksgiving 2002 a female turkey named Katie was spared. By virtue of this presidential pardon, Katie is not on her way to the dinner table, but to Kidwell Farm in Herndon, Va. Which by the way, has an attraction known as Frying Pan Park. Diana Meade, ©November 2002
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