Drain, Baby, Drain

So many words died so she could say absolutely nothing.

“So that was Mrs. McCain on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Wasilla. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.”

I had my son take a homework break to watch it. We called it “social studies.”

Is this video real? Like, is she… FOR REAL? Does anyone with any savvy at all let themselves get upstaged like that? That guy was fucking RIVETING.

She and, I presume, some kind of professional person who is paid to look after her interests, walked around a turkey farm, saw two drains and a bloodbath, and said, RIGHT HERE IS FINE.

Please, please run in 2012. Please.

P.S. And the blood bath is on milk crates. It’s brilliant, really.

@RomeGirl: It really is perfect.

The first dead turkey looked a lot like the one she supposedly “pardoned.”

The “pardoned” turkey was a dirty bird just like that one. If it were, it would complete the hilarity.

The guy draining the blood made me laugh.

I don’t see what the big deal is with seeing a dead bird. It’s food (eventually.) I grew up in a rural area and one of our class trips was to the beef packing plant. They never showed us the killing floor, but it was freaky to see live cows going in one place and slabs of meat coming out. A lot of my classmates gave up beef for a while.

OK, people, there are vegetarians here. So I’m not going to look. Your weird voodoo ritual of “Ooh, I let one go free so the spirits of all the birds I slaughter won’t rise up to slay me.” That being said, I would love to watch. But I won’t. But I guess it’s pretty amazing. But I won’t watch. Unless… No, I won’t watch. But as a tribute to her stupidity it’s pretty tempting.

How many Sarah Palins does it take to change a light bulb? 5. One to change the bulb and four to change the cue cards.

And is that a Burberry scarf I spy? So not all the loot went back to GOP.

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. Do they collect the blood for gravy?

Will someone please get her off the fucking teevee? I know that the continual coverage is helping to hurt her but dammit, I want the old days when she was some obscure governor up in a state way far away from us in the lower 48.

I saw the Countdown coverage and it was nasty and childish. In Alaska, I am sure it played well for their governor to be sliding around in the mud and blood at a turkey farm. It is not her fault she comes from a culture that can be much closer to the dynamics of the food chain than, say, that of Connecticut.

It is a waste of time covering shit like this when there are horrific stories of abuse of office – like the closing of the state-funded dairy which ended with all the dairy equipment in the hands of a political patron running an identical operation funded by a federal earmark. That kind of story should be on TV every 15 minutes.

NOJO,

Those of us who live in the Fargo-Moorhead area ask that you kindly refrain from associating Sarah Palin with our fair metro area.

HR

@FlyingChainSaw: Totally agree with our Rennaissaince Man. However, would totally lurv it if you could embed the vid in some youtube format so that I can view it here at work. I couldn’t call it up on my ipod last night during the game, and I need bloodsport entertainment to help me to the weekend.

Oh, and the reference to Michael Keaton on last night’s Detroit thread? He played the foreman of a steel mill taken over by a Japanese company in the 80s. Hilarity ensues. But you knew that and I’m making the usual ass of myself.

I can haz turkey vid pleez?

@nabisco: Couldn’t remember the name of it — “Gung Ho”? Really? — and turned to Wikipedia, which offered this charming anecdote: “Toyota’s executives used this film as an example of how not to manage Americans.”

@Benedick: What? I’m a vegetarian and I think this was my fourth time through that wonderful clip. I mean, the activist in me says that every politician who goes to a killing facility to “pardon” one turkey should have to do so while shouting above the din of all the other, unpardoned turkeys having their heads ground off just to underline how weird and hypocritical this “tradition” is (squeamish carnivorism irritates the crap out of me).

But you know, that’s not the reason I like this clip. It’s the little things, like when the new turkey is shoved head-first into the grinder right when the interviewer says “chopping block,” or when Sarah blithely says, “I’m probably gonna get criticized for this, too, but at least this was FUN!”

@Benedick: I noticed the Burberry, too. What does it say about me that there’s literally a bloodbath in the background and all I can focus on is the fashion.

@BRB: I’m not squeamish. I just can’t take the casual brutality with which we treat animals. That’s why I don’t eat meat, not for health reasons. If it were Palin with her head in a shredder I could happily watch all night.

@Mistress Cynica: That you have priorities right.

FlyingChainSaw: I agree on many different levels. This is fluff-piece writ large.

And yet: the President of the United States, for decades, has participated in this charade of pardoning a turkey to live at a petting zoo while all of his pals get the chop. (Or, literally: the slice and drain.) The photo-op is a totally pointless deal where the President always gets to say how great it is to live in America and Pilgrims and troops and blah blah blah.

Here, you had Sarah Palin’s total lack of self-awareness, and the reminder that she was very, very close to being our next veep, which is still frightening in a funny way. Plus, there was the reality that turkeys around T-day do not all dress up in Pilgrim garb and wave to grinning kids on the parade route, even after a cute pardon ceremony. It was perfect.

So the stories of graft get short-shrift again. Same as it ever was. But we know things are worse than bad — they’re crazy etc. etc. etc. Meanwhile, this was — apart from the death of adorable little animals — freaking hilarious.

[Add: Yeah. What BRB said.]

@mellbell: Hmm, didn’t recall the name (yeah, really?) and obviously had forgotten it was about the auto industry, not steel. It’s such an obvious Ron Howard flick, though, and there hadn’t been such a loving ode to Pittsburgh since, well, Flashdance.

@FlyingChainSaw: Yeah, that stuff on Countdown really took the edge off of this video. First of all, because Fake Keith’s voice is quite possibly more annoying than the Bunny’s. Second, his attempts to be Keith fall flat. Third, they blurred out what exactly? You don’t actually see the bird decapitated nor any river of blood coming out of the bird. At best, you see a turkey shoved into a metal funnel with his legs and wings flapping a little.

This was amusing but not enough to warrant the big to-do MSNBC gave it.

@Mistress Cynica: It’s a knockoff, I’m sure.

@HillRat: Glad you found us! I promise this is our last schism.

@nabisco: But it is YouTube.

@FlyingChainSaw: Giant Comic Turkey Feet are sticking out of the giant blood funnel behind her. I’m sorry, but no amount of contextualizing will overcome that.

@nojo: But it is YouTube. Then my overlords have finally found out how to squeeze an extra five minutes of my blood from the daily grindstone. The embeds used to play just fine, it was the site itself that was blocked.

@HillRat: I haven’t been keeping up with DCist all that much lately, but it’s good to see you here.

Mrs RML worked with or went to school with a guy who became a spokesweasel for the National Turkey Association. One of his jobs was to set up the annual White House turkey pardoning. I believe there was a turkey related incident in Bush I that he was there for.

I was a little disappointed to have to plunk down money for a frozen bird yesterday, but I’m sure people would just have poked at one I hunted myself, although Son of RML gets a kick out of finding shot in his dinner. Stupid turkeys just mocked me out of sight and from beyond shotgun range this fall by responding to my calls but refusing to come in. Just feeling the call of the wild today.

@redmanlaw: A wild turkey once tried to get in my car with me, of his own accord. Used to pass a spot where a flock hung out every day, one day they were crossing the road, and I slowed down, and 4 or 5 toms just stayed in the road, challenging me, I assume to try to impress the hens. When I stopped, they started displaying the tail feathers and gobbling, and one walked around to my open window, stuck his head in, and gobbled at me, I put the window up. It was cool. I love the babies, too, like footballs with legs.

@chicago bureau: I guess. The only thing that disgusts me is that the reporter doesn’t, for example, pull out the auction manifests of her buddy cleaning up on the state dairy assets sell-off and ask her, “Hey, before the station makes its referral to the US AG, is there any reason we and the viewers should not be led to believe you and your colleagues are participating in the bust-out of a state-controlled asset for your own enrichment? Do you think you’ll enjoy eating pussy when you go to jail?”

Maybe seconds would have been absorbed in this effort on that day after they got the documents in hand – and they would have done at least part of their job. The only thing that disgusts me is that this qualifies as journalism and they took 10 minutes of viewers time for what? A governor mom feature with a 2012 campaign interview and some turkey guts. Great.

I mean, what the fuck? When RML is governor of New Mexico, they’ll be chasing him all over hill and dale on Thanksgiving week as he blasts wild birds left and right and then guts and dresses the thing on camera.

FlyingChainSaw: If they’d make Gov. RML’s hunting trip into a nationwide holiday TV special, complete with country music stars (spontaneously) knocking on the door inside a tricked-out studio, I’d plop down in front of the huge plasma TV that Best Buy can’t sell and watch, gaping.

@chicago bureau: Make it PPV and there’s half your state budget.

@Jamie Sommers: Ah yes, like the infamous Vuitton bag.

@chicago bureau: Fuck that shit. James Hetfield from Metallica is going out in the field with me to shoot eggs in the nest with shotguns while we swig Don Julio from the bottle. Then Maynard from Tool comes over for target shooting with handguns on Santa cutouts. Shirley Manson and Christina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil will be dressed as elves and hand random shit out in the parking lot of the El Parasol burrito joint.

Metal.