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TRUTH MISSED
Minnesota’s Diamond Dog asks several questions relating to plastic turkey mythology. You’ve come to the right place, friend! Let’s see if we can set you right:
I don’t know anything about the plastic turkey story being an invention. Rabid Bush-haters in BowieNet made me aware of the plastic turkey story immediately after the Washington Post reported that the turkey was actually plastic.
In fact, the Washington Post reported that the turkey was real: “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.” This article turns up in Google searches for “plastic turkey” because, mystifyingly, so many leftoid bloggers link to it using those words.
I’m a pro-W, pro-Iraq liberation right-wing Republican blogger from Minnesota. I read other blogs daily ...
I remember the widespread reporting on the fake turkey back when it broke in 2003 and I’ve always believed those reports to be true. So this revelation that the turkey was actually real and that the NYTimes ran a correction on the story, is all shocking news to me.
I’ve spent a good deal of time investigating this just now with various search engines and I see no verification that the turkey was real. Your own link, purportedly pointing to a NY Times correction, does not bring me to any such correction, but rather to today’s Corrections page.
Both the NY Times and the LA Times ran corrections, which have since been either archived or erased due to shame. Happily, these corrections live on in the blogosphere. Bloomberg’s correction to this fake turkey claim may be seen here.
A search in Media Busters turns up nothing.
A search in Technorati brings me only to more reporting on the “fact” that the turkey was fake.
If the story is bogus and the turkey actually was fake, I am at a loss to understand why yours is the only blog I can find which claims this.
Not so, as you’ll find at the links above.
Usually, this is the thing the right wing blogs excel at; amplifying and spreading the truth in a bogus msm story. Why did I miss the truth in this expose’ for three years?
Why can I not find a single story anywhere that has the smoking gun facts?
Check that first Washington Post story again, Diamond. The facts were in from day one.
I’d appreciate it if anyone could post a link that would shed some light on this.
Glad to be of assistance!
UPDATE. Subsequent thoughts from Diamond Dog:
I sincerely do thank everyone, especially Tim Blair, for bringing this body of evidence out into the open. I am convinced that the turkey was real. I am convinced that the Guardian printed a bogus story and refuses to correct that story. I am convinced that the msm generally is being obstructionist in allowing the public easy access to the corrections.
I’ve thought a bit more about why I was in the dark over this matter. Back in 2003 I was not yet a blogger and was reading primarily Andrew Sullivan in the blogosphere. I think it was only later that I learned that the sphere was much larger than the Daily Dish. By then, the turkey story had probably faded.
Of course, the bogus plastic turkey story is not very important. But it is an apt example of how the msm distorts reality. The most important aspect of the story is not that the turkey was real, but as an example of how msm bias works. And it works effectively. I was totally hornswaggled.
Many leftists and liberals will respond by asking what makes the difference if it was real or not? It was still a display turkey.
It makes all the difference. The MSM fictionalizes its news to stress what it believes to be the “higher truth” to various issues. But at its core, it’s fiction.
If the MSM cannot get the plastic turkey story right, how much of the other news is factual?
At this point, can we trust what we read?
Posted by wronwright on 2007 01 04 at 10:00 AM • permalinkAndrea closed new registration a short time ago because of an influx of new trolls. She didn’t have time to monitor the crap they were spewing, especially that annoying little gadfly who kept linking to anti-Bush videos. Since I despise trolls I support her action.
Actually, if it was up to me, we would keep new registration closed indefinitely. If someone wants to register, make them apply to a committee. Make it like American Idol. I want to see talent.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 01 04 at 10:08 AM • permalinkMore importantly, it was spun as purely a planned campaign photo op and nothing more. While in essance all public appearances of politicians are photo-op, it is inappropriate to judge this one any differently. It was not a planned photo op, it was a traditional center-piece as used at most holiday buffets. Not planned/arranged by white-house!
Alas, Diamond Dog, but nothing is immortal, even on the INTERNET. So the corrections may not have survived in an easily recognized form, although the WaPo article is very clear about the turkey being real.
And while you might not be able to get corrections directly from the NYT and LAT, there is plenty of supporting evidence from other bloggers. It’s circumstantial evidence, but pretty strong.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 01 04 at 10:42 AM • permalinkIndeed, aaron_, several of the US mil-commenters at Tim’s site here confirmed that at every US mess hall, everywhere on every Thanksgiving there is always a display bird while the troops and officers eat turkey roll.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 01 04 at 10:44 AM • permalinkFunny, but when I Googled “turkey not plastic”, I got a Tim Blair post linking to the New York Times explaining that the turkey was real for result number one, a Washingtonpost.com headline “The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner” explaining that the turkey was real for result number three, and at number five, a commenter named Dave S. explaining to a dumb lefty blogger that the turkey was real. Pretty straightforward. What was the problem?
Now, I’ll admit, only one of those sources is trustworthy, but still…
#4, ww:
Actually, if it was up to me, we would keep new registration closed indefinitely. If someone wants to register, make them apply to a committee. Make it like American Idol. I want to see talent.
Woohoo! Glad I got in before that. My only chance of making the grade would be if talent actually translated into vitriol.
It seems that those obsessed with the structural makeup of the turkey in question are really upset that the President didn’t use the turkey he posed with to actually feed the 600 soldiers present...just like Jesus would!
It’s kind of like the old joke “If I walked on water, they’d say I couldn’t swim.”
Posted by lizardflix on 2007 01 04 at 12:23 PM • permalinkHmmmm.
It’s actually rather amusing really. As explained before by another commenter, every messhall in the US military has a display turkey (real) while the troops eat turkey roll.
It’s just the way it is. The display bird is there to feed the senior NCO’s later on, sorry, for morale purposes.
So it shows you just how many lefties have never eaten in a messhall.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 01 04 at 12:37 PM • permalink#10 RebeccaH
#2 At this point, can we trust what we read?
No.
Perhaps we should pose that question to Jamil Hussein…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 01 04 at 02:01 PM • permalink#4 Wronwright
(and agreeing with Grimmy) I would have never have made it in.. I am just a quiet one (as evidence by my mere 42 comments) who escapes to this blog to read all the clever comments.. to laugh and to learn. bet I am cuter than grimmy tho’! >wink<
however DD is an idiot if he cant find corrections to the plastic turkey storyHeck, if we had a committee to review applications for membership at this blog, wronwright wouldn’t get in.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 01 04 at 03:45 PM • permalink#20 The_Real_JeffS -
Heck, if we had a committee to review applications for membership at this blog, wronwright wouldn’t get in.
(wronwright searches for TRJS application, reopens FBI file, picks up magnifying glass, pores over minutiae of a fairly staid and uneventful adolesence, focuses on testimony by old neighbor lady that TRJS once wore a GIMME JIMMY campaign button)
Give him Jimmy, eh. Yeah, I’ll give him the old Jimmy. Something tells me Jeff ain’t going to quite make it to the next level.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 01 04 at 04:45 PM • permalinkOT You can rid your screen of the pink sheep fetishist by clicking and holding the blue bar at the top of your browser, then dragging the whole window a few inches (deciliters) to the left (right).
Narrowing the window and scrolling sideways doesn’t work.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2007 01 04 at 04:54 PM • permalinkmissred,
Your comments permeate with cuteness. I believe you also said in a prior comment you have red hair. Those two factors would likely get you in.
Grimmy though, hmmm. Cuteness does not know that man. Chances would indeed be slim. Better than TRJS true, but slim nonetheless.
I want cuteness people! Lots and lots of cute smiles. In fact, I think we need to take a chapter from the Lawrence Welk Show (from the 1960’s). Have the ladies in the audience wearing cute white gloves, smile, and wave to the cameras.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 01 04 at 04:55 PM • permalinkOf course, the original plan was for Bush to serve up plastic turkey.
However the US military made the mistake of having it delivered by a Lebanese ambulance…
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 04 at 05:33 PM • permalink#1 Well, I’m sorry he couldn’t register. After visiting Freedomdogs, IMO he’d fit in here just fine.
(Anyone who writes for a site where they call Nancy Pelosi “The Wicked Witch of the West” can’t be all bad!)
Posted by Old Grouch on 2007 01 04 at 05:33 PM • permalinkOT Jennifer Marohasy points out that booming populations of polar bears may yet kill us before global warming does.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 04 at 05:42 PM • permalinkwronwright, I voted for Ford. Maybe I wore a “GIMME JIMMY” button to impress a hot coed. Or two. Or three. I forget, after all these years.
But my heart was always in the right place. Even if other body parts weren’t. ;-)
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 01 04 at 05:47 PM • permalink#2 wronwright, you’ve nailed the whole plastic turkey non-story right there. Lefties will dance gleefully around the maypole chanting “plastic turkey! plastic turkey” all solstice long, and when you point out that it was a real turkey they’ll accuse you of obsessing over trivia.
“With the atmosphere destroyed and all the polar bears dead and the Patriot Act revoking every single human right there ever was, and sixty squillion jillion bazillion Iraqians fatally killed to death by Bush and Rove, I can’t believe you’re going on about some turkey!”
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2007 01 04 at 06:13 PM • permalinkWow - I’ve never been one of the cool kids before. Guess I better start posting some comments so I don’t get tossed for non-participation.
Plastic turkey… the libs will keep shouting it until it’s accepted as fact. That’s how they work - repeat something false until everyone believes it’s true.
As for me - I did vote for Ford and I was very depressed when Jimmah won that election… although I rather expected the loss since the country was into self-flagellation at the time. Jimmah was wonderful at making Americans feel like the lowest scum on earth. If he’d held up a turkey and someone claimed it was plastic - he would have said that Americans weren’t worth a real turkey - especially the military.
The recent HRW ambulance report and now Diamond Dog’s search for the turkey truth are reminders for those of us who rely on the Internet rather than the MSM.
We tend to forget just how fictional and ephemeral the MSM has become.
The only parts of it that have any longevity are the lies.
The good thing about the blogosphere is that, because its data is so widely stored, it is actually much more permanent than the electronic MSM or even print MSM.
And, of course, Google means you don’t need a degree in research to find what you are seeking.OT as usual
One of the most slanted news stories I have ever seen
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 04 at 08:29 PM • permalinkI haven’t re-opened registration yet because the first week of the year at my day job has left me exhausted—imagine chickens without a head trying to herd a bunch of cats—and I just can’t deal with trolls right now. I’ll re-open it eventually, or when Tim tells me to, whichever comes first.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 01 04 at 08:31 PM • permalinkAw come on, if we didn’t have the “fake, but true” plastic turkey story, Dan Rather wouldn’t have had a chance with those original National Guard memos typed using Microsoft Word.
(Remember all the hoops they jumped through trying to explain there once existed a $6,000 IBM machine--essentially a linotype machine--that might have been able to produce such a document.)
Not only do the Dems believe the sheeple are easily led, they believe they easily fed.
Lies.
Ubique: tell the headless chickens that.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 01 04 at 10:25 PM • permalinkhere’s what is probably the only correction the ABC ran about the turkey
it’s in a story about the evil halliburton displacing aussie contractors, including Morris corporation who cooked the bird in the first place
‘The Australian company had been responsible for feeding not only US troops in Iraq, but it even prepared that thanksgiving turkey so publicly enjoyed by President George W. Bush’
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 04 at 10:35 PM • permalinkdamn- scrap that- they do slip ‘plastic’ in.
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 04 at 10:40 PM • permalinki just talked with the ceo of Morris catering Robert McVicar who confirmed they were definitely the caterers.
in his words ‘Bush walked past the buffet and off his own bat picked up the display turkey- it was a genuine turkey- 100% not plastic. The photographers took pictures.’
he also expressed some surprise and said i was the first person to ask about the incident, which says a lot about journalists
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 04 at 11:26 PM • permalink#54, eeniemeenie:
You know, according to standards and practices and, probably ethics and… stuff… for journalism, asking someone that was actually there and who is not at least suspected of being associated with or loyal to our enemy during a time of war… that’s like, a no no.
You’ll never get your pull-its-her now.
51. Andrea Harris, Administrator
Thats easy, simply have a squeamish 12 year old girl nearby, chop the chickens head and watch it make a beeline for her. If its anything like the one that got my sister it will follow her into the outside dunny just as she slams the door.
Suprizing how easily a 12 year old girl can bust out an asbestos panel wall.Molefact: If you chop a chooks head off close to the head then pull out the windpipe and blow into it like a whistle it will cluck!! I leave you with that as your thought for lunch.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 01 04 at 11:34 PM • permalinkI think I can beat everyone. In the 1980 election, I voted for the 3rd party candidate, John Anderson. I didn’t like what Reagan said about the possible need to blockade Cuba, and standing up to China over Taiwan. I thought the guy was a true die in the wool rightwing death beast. He couldn’t be trusted to rule the world
Yeah, well, I’ve learned a great deal since then.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 01 05 at 12:07 AM • permalink#45 - Heard that on News Radio today MM. But as the good Reverend Spooner often said, there’s only one coll that pounts.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 01 05 at 12:17 AM • permalink#35 Rebase, one of the commenters here did go looking for companies that made (realistic) plastic turkeys and IIRC he/she only found one--a Japanese company and its product was very, very expensive.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 01 05 at 12:24 AM • permalinkSpeak truth like yoda does Mark L…
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 01 05 at 12:35 AM • permalinkI feel bad for the chap. Let’s help him out with the quote from the New York Times as well. Link
Correction: July 11, 2004, Sunday An article last Sunday about surprises in politics referred incorrectly to the turkey carried by President Bush during his unannounced visit to American troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving. It was real, not fake.
Can I recommend a link? It’s a blog called Overcoming Bias and the post is about Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.
Apparently, even real frogs will jump out of slowly heated water. Now the whole point of the movie is that it shows a talk Gore supposedly gave over and over and over. What are the odds no one ever told him or his staff the frog story was wrong? What does that tell you about how well the rest of the movie was fact-checked?
Plastic turkeys and boiling frogs. Right seeks truth, left spreads falsehoods.
Anyone think there’s any money in a plastic turkey keyring?
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 01 05 at 05:21 AM • permalinkWELCOME TO TIM BLAIR’S CLUB OF FINE BLOGGING.
Discreet entrance at rear.
Friday Night Specials: Mistress Andrea and her Rod Of Exquisite Pain. The Amazing Wronwright and His Blue Box of Mystery. Grumbles with Grimmy. Performace Artist 1.618 and the Art of Perplexity. And, this month only, the world-famous Blair’s Beastettes, dressed only in feather-boas dancing to Offenbach’s Can-Can. Daa, da-da-da-da- daa daa, da-da, da-da…#70 i remembered hearing somewhere that an aussie company had catered that particular thanksgiving dinner in iraq
after a bit of googling i found the abc corpwatch report in comment 52.
it didnt dismiss the turkey story (as i first thought)but did mention Morris corp which has its hq here in brisbane. i looked them up and rang them asking for clarification about the turkey.
i was put on hold for a while and when the guy came back he said the ceo mr mcvicar would be happy to speak to me but was not in the office and gave me a number i could reach him on.
i rang mr mcvicar and asked him if his company had catered the 2003 thanksgiving dinner with george bush in iraq and whether or not the turkey was real.
mr mcvicar said yes they had catered that thanksgiving and ‘of course the turkey was real’
he asked me why i wanted to know this and i explained the ‘george bush with a plastic turkey story was still kicking around and i was looking for proof it wasnt true’
mr mcvicar said he was surprised, and that ‘noone had ever raised the matter with him’. he said he’d talk ‘to the people who were there on the ground and get back to me’ which he did.(and i took notes)
‘we did a few of these big occasions, we had rumsfeld and cheney through’ said mr mcvicar
he said that it ‘was different with bush’ because ‘he didnt follow the script’
‘Bush walked past the buffet and off his own bat picked up the display turkey- it was a genuine turkey- 100% not plastic. The photographer* took pictures.’
‘i have no political affiliations one way or another but the turkey was 100% real- we were the caterers we cooked it- it wasnt plastic’
he also said they got the turkey from their suppliers but i’m not certain i heard the name correctly so i didnt include it in my earlier comment.
in my notes it says ‘seven seven supplies’ but that part could easily be wrong- i was at work and getting significant looks from my boss towards the end of the conversation.
what i find bizarre is that in three years no journalist had bothered to go to the catering company to hear what they had to say.
sorry about the length of the post but i thought it best to give an accurate account of my conversation with mr mcvicar
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 05 at 09:33 AM • permalinkmr mcvicar said he was surprised, and that ‘noone had ever raised the matter with me’. he said he’d talk ‘to the people who were there on the ground and get back to you’
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 05 at 09:36 AM • permalinkHmmm.
It depends on situation. If the display turkey is out there for hours, then no. It gets discarded because it’s dangerous to eat turkey that’s been sitting for hours at room temperature.
But the last base I was stationed at the display turkey disappeared about 15 minutes after the messhall opened.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 01 05 at 11:53 AM • permalinkDminor
You should have seen the stuff posted before 12 Dec 04, been downhill ever since. Back then, Tim had the only thesaurus, and Andrea ...Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 01 05 at 02:45 PM • permalinkA Pullet Surprise for eeniemeenie...brilliant work.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2007 01 06 at 05:40 PM • permalink
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The poor guy couldn’t register here.
How come registrations here are closed? I’d like some new faces, I’m right over some of you guys.