Bushs’ Plastic Turkey
By Callimachus | Related entries in General Politics, Kitchen Sink, Partisan HacksHow many people heard an anti-administration type chortling over the “Bush served plastic turkey to troops in Iraq in ‘03″ story this holiday? I just heard my newsroom co-worker insist, without a shadow of doubt, that it was an absolute, incontrovertible fact that Bush posed with a plastic turkey, pretending it was a real one.
This was a popular story on the left-wing blogs last year about this time. It seems to be entrenched over there now. It’s going to go down in history as yet one more of those little memories that divide us as a nation.
In fact, the story’s not true. There was no plastic turkey. It was a “decoration” turkey — a sort of centerpiece, not for carving. But it was quite real. Here’s a contemporary story from WaPo, which, though smirklingly hostile to Bush, gets the essential facts right.
In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving Day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a platter with a golden-brown turkey.
The bird looks perfect, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 2½-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving platter.
Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush’s stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.
The scene, which lasted only a few seconds, was recorded by a pool photographer and described by officials yesterday in response to questions raised in Washington.
Emphasis added. It should be noted, too, that Bush took turns dishing out the real chow in the buffet line on that day.
The little embarrassments are bad enough, but for some people they’re clearly not bad enough. Everything has to be magnified to the N-th degree.
Now, fess up: How many of you told the “plastic turkey” story this holiday?
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December 4th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I didn’t pass on the “plastic turkey” story, but only because when something that “juicy” (or non-juicy, as the case may be) pops up, I go and check the facts. Truth be told, when I summoned that great photo to mind, the “fact” that it was plastic fit the image perfectly. I got the story from the Guardian, by the way, not a left-wing blog. Not that the Guardian is the high-mark of journalistic integrity–hence my double-check–but it is a “real” news source and there are probably other “real” news sources that took the “prop” fact and morphed it into a “plastic prop” factoid.
It isn’t only left-wingers that make mistakes, you know. From a right wing blog, “They have blind faith that Bush is evil and wrong so anything can be used to defeat him, even lies.” My version “I have blind faith that Bush is evil and wrong so anything can be used to defeat him, even truth.”
There are very few people who I would dare to call evil, but Bush.43 has earned that distinction by subverting the Constitution (and, though the story that he called it a “goddamned piece of paper” probably has no basis in fact, it, like the plastic turkey, fits the picture so well that it is eminently credible), by causing the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of civilian women and children by lying to deceive his nation, and by making me, as one of the citizens he represents, into a torturer. I wish I believed in Hell so that I could wish him a place in it.
December 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Hmmmm.
Bush 43 evil? Nonsense.
The same people calling Bush 43 “evil” are the ones who supposedly love Lincoln.
Who did a lot more things that would make them blanch.
December 11th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
No, just this one. Which is what the subject of the post.
December 16th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
People,
My take on the plastic turkey comments.It says a huge amount about anyone believing such nonsense.A reporter from the Madison (Wis) newspaper wrote someting about this.I’d written a brief note to his editor asking if he could take a MMPI.My feelings about this can best be explaianed by an illustration from my own profession (medicine).A few months ago,there was a news story about a teenage girl who had peanut allergies and died after kissing a boy who’d eaten a PB and J hours earlier.
No dod I know believed the story for a second.Anyone with professional training in the field knew enogh about antigen loads,anaphylaxis, respnse time to know there was no possibility of it being real.Zip.Nada.So,it may have flown by people who weren’t knowldgeable,but it screeched to a halt when it ran into people with professsional expertise.(And the story was changed to say cause of death was an asthma attack.)
Now,a plastic turkey story presupposes
1)There were no actual turkeys available in Iraq for the president to carry;
2)The president was stupid enough to carry a plastic turkey
3)No one was smart enough to tell the President what an error carrying a plastic turkey would be.
4)The soldiders wouldn’t react to this
5)National media wouldn’t pick this up.
Anyone believing the above is almost impervious to reality.But,not quite.There must be a little trepidation about being exposed,hence the ‘Who can say”? commentsThis is akin to a group of ,say,chiroppracters or homeopaths banding into a group to practice group denial of non nucleosides as a treatmeent of HIV.They don’t want to believe this,so they’ll refuse.It is intensely interesting to see an editor deny painful knowledge.This is someone who would scoff at a conspiracy to fake a lunar landing,but is just as nutty.I’m serious.I would love a personality profile on him.