Pardon the Tofurky.

Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006

Crystal Ball: Move over, Mort Kondracke. You heard it here first: as predicted, Flyer and Fryer held on to defeat Plymouth and Rock, 27% to 22%, in this year's White House turkey naming contest. Corn and Copia, the other food item on voters' menu, finished third with 21%, ahead of deserving founder Ben and Franklin at 18%. Washington and Lincoln ended up first in war, first in peace, and last in the turkey standings, with 12%.

In what may be an early glimpse of a kinder, gentler Bush, the president dispensed with his annual neck-and-neck joke. He has given up pretending the election was close. Instead, Bush joked that it was probably better to be called Flyer than Fryer. He said the turkeys' owners "did a fine job raising these birds," then petted Fryer's neck and called it "a fine-looking bird."

Bush also revealed that although Barney had enjoyed chasing Flyer around the Rose Garden, his favorite toy is a soccer ball. That makes the president an honorary soccer dad, too late to win back any suburban swing voters.

Bates Motel: Flyer and Fryer have flown off to greener, Barney-free pastures in Disneyland. They don't know how lucky they are. With no help from Washington, some states are finding their own ways to reduce the turkey retiree burden. The Montgomery Advertiser reports on Alabama's solution: coyotes.

Every November, Bill Bates, a leading Republican who runs the largest turkey farm in the state, brings the best bird from his flock of 20,000+ to Montgomery for the governor to pardon. Bates, who has been doing this since segregationist days, doesn't need an online naming contest. He gives his best bird the same name every year: Clyde.

While a pardon may be the dream of every turkey worth his salt, the Advertiser's account suggests it's not easy being Clyde. The paper reports that many of Bates's prized turkeys "ate so much and got so fat that they had a hard time even waddling around the farm." Others apparently "have been known to drown during storms when they lift their beaks to the open sky."

But the pardon of Clyde '05 proved to be the cruelest hoax of all. After being honored by the governor, Clyde '05 went on display at a farmers' market in Montgomery. PETA complained about his shabby treatment, so Bates brought him back to the farm. A few months ago, a coyote got into his pen and had an early Thanksgiving dinner. "Poor Clyde never had a chance," Bates told the paper. "There wasn't much left but feathers and bones."

Since then, Bates has installed a new security system – barbed wire. But if more coyotes had time to read blogs, they might have left Clyde alone and followed this hot tip from Huffington Post: Tofurky. Made with "organic, non-genetically engineered soybeans," Tofurky has been "America's Leading Turkey Alternative Since 1995."

The 2007 "Gobble the Vote" naming contest is 364 days away, but we already have a frontrunner: Tofurky and Clyde. You heard it here first. … 1:27 A.M. (link)