Last Week Tonight may be on hiatus, but John Oliver can still be in your life thanks to the periodic “web exclusives” he posts on the LWT YouTube page. This week, he’s taking aim at a tradition he (correctly) calls “profoundly strange”: the Presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey.
The practice of saving the bird from slaughter apparently started in 1989, when then-President George H.W. Bush pardoned the ceremonial turkey when it was presented to him on the White House lawn. Back in the good ol days (beginning with Harry Truman), the President actually ate the bird.
No fan of fall traditions, Oliver is clearly in the Truman camp, as his “death to turkeys” chant clearly implies.
[via Salon]
