What happened to all the pardons?

Thanks to Magnus Fiskesjö, I am vaguely obsessed with all things dealing with the Thanksgiving turkey pardon. Make sure you read his short book, The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, the Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo. The longest title for the shortest book. Also, make sure to read his follow up article, "The reluctant sovereign: New adventures of the US presidential Thanksgiving turkey." Well, this article from the Washington Post continues that (though the stuff about eating humanely raised turkeys is obvious nonsense). In it, we also discover that:

After tomorrow, Obama will have "pardoned" 10 turkeys in all (turkeys that, as best we can tell, haven't actually committed any crimes). By contrast, he will have only pardoned or commuted the sentences of 40 actual living human beings.

Indeed, if you look at the graph in the article, you will notice that there is a huge drop off in pardons and commuting of sentences by Bill Clinton. So, basically around the same time that we have the rise of thanksgiving turkey pardons, we also have a significantly huge decrease in actual pardons.

More on the Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon

First, there is this essay, at times wonderful and other times horrible, on the Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon from Orion.
Wonkbook briefly discusses the Orion essay here.
Wonkbook also brings us this very funny McSweeney's piece. Which is a nice play on the perennial question: What have the turkeys done that they require a pardon?

The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon and sacriifical community

Another thanksgiving pardon, another suggestion for you to read Magnus Fiskesjö's The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, the Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo (.pdf) from Prickly Paradigm Press. Like other PPP titles, it is short and accessible. Also, you should read his follow-up: Fiskesjö, Magnus "The reluctant sovereign: New adventures of the US presidential Thanksgiving turkey." Anthropology Today (October 2010), Volume 26, Issue 5, pages 13–17.

I also want to remind readers about this post I made about a Foer and Bourdain debate. The logic of sacrifice is one that the sacred structures the profane--that the exceptional structures the everyday and the common. Understanding within community, and understanding as being a part of community, is crisscrossed with sacrifice, with a shared sense of the sacred and the profane. This is, of course, easy for any vegetarian or vegan to understand this time of the year, when I have a dozen emails from semi-official sources wishing me a Happy Turkey Day. Over the years I have known many new vegetarians and vegans to falter during their exceptional family get togethers--during Thanksgiving and Christmas and Passover and Superbowl and many other times besides. How we eat and what we choose to eat is at the heart of communion and community, it is at the heart of host and hospitality, it is at the heart of all breaking bread and shared interpellation. Just as the exceptional pardon of the Executive (the one who executes) structures the everyday violence of the sovereign, the exceptional holiday structures the everyday community. Choosing not to eat flesh tomorrow will most certainly change or challenge many of your communities, but it will also open up new ones. New communions, new communities, new commons, new communications, new relations. And maybe one day we will find a time when we can come together outside of the dialectic of the sacred and the profane, maybe one day we will be able to sacrifice sacrifice. Until then, good luck everyone. May you find your communities as rich and rewarding as I find mine.

The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon

Many of you have probably already seen the viral video of Sarah Palin, after conducting a pardoning of a local turkey, doing an interview while a turkey is slaughtered right behind her. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/20/sarah-palin-holds-news-co_n_145375.html

This, along with thanksgiving in general, seems like a good idea to push everyone to read Magnus Fiskesjö's The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, the Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo from Prickly Paradigm Press. You can download it free from the publisher here, http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm11.pdf
Like the other titles from PPP, it is short, manifesto style pamphlet/book. It is also extremely insightful, grasping the connection between the annual thanksgiving turkey pardon and biopolitical/sovereign violence.