At the end of the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a reporter says “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Sadly, sometimes stories take on more life than the truth behind them, and that fictional reporter sometimes speaks for real ones.
Take the legend of President Bush’s plastic turkey. In 2003, President Bush visited the troops in Iraq in a surprise Thanksgiving dinner tour. He was shown serving the Thanksgiving turkey, and morale was definitely boosted. US troops tend to love President Bush, especially those who served in the war on terror.
Reporting on the event was mixed, some seemed shocked the president would even show up in a war zone, while others focused on a strange aspect of the story, claiming that the turkey was fake, a plastic bird, which was indicative of the entire affair. It was a staged event, false and gimmicky, something to be mocked, they said. For some reason, this caught on with many on the left and it has been repeated again and again by various sources around the world: Bush and the plastic turkey.
In the modern media with politician stunt appearances contrived press conferences, the idea of a president posing with a prop seems almost quaint. President Obama brings a team of people to the gulf coast to look like they’re cleaning up while he lets people take pictures, then packs them all home, and that’s no particular cause for notice. Yet the plastic turkey story is used over and over as a symbol of the alleged falsehood of President Bush.
The problem is, that turkey was real. It was edible, and the troops ate slices of the turkey in their meal. Even the New York Times admitted that much in a story correction that ran in July of 2004:
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.
Still, the myth persists. Over the years, Tim Blair has been all over this story, every time he sees someone mention the myth, such as John Kerry, Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, ABC Correspondant Nick Grimm, Southern Illinois University physiology instructor Mick Youther, Australian Greens member of Parliament Michael Organ, CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux, bloggers Daniel Patrick Welch and Marc Perkel, media monitor Yamin Zakaria, The Nation’s Naomi Klein, Slate’s William Satelan, SF Chronicle’s Mark Morford, Pam Burns at Chicago Life, Oregonian’s David Sarasohn, New York Post columnist Matt Taibi… the list goes on and on.
There was a stunt bird in place. While President Bush sliced and served turkey to the footsoldiers, there was a beautifully prepared and decorated turkey in place to show what was being eaten. It was a centerpiece for the feast, and real, as Mike Allen at the Washington Post admitted.
Why bring this up now? Because it is a myth that persists both online and in the media at large, and that’s the kind of myths that people on the right have to fight in order to seek the truth. The left thrives on this kind of thing, because they know the power (thank you Saul Alinsky) of emotionally compelling talking points, the kind of one-liner images that comedians and popular culture pundits can slip into conversation, movies, and speeches. They’re little hooks to pull the country leftward, away from its foundation and heritage.
Each new myth that’s created has to be fought, like the “Bush banned all but creationist books from the Grand Canyon visitor center” myth or the “Obama was born in Kenya” myth. The truth always helps conservatism, because conservatism is based on truth and reality rather than theory and speculation. Whenever these myths come up, each of us has to make sure we get the correction out there so that the truth can stand firm and we can counter the left’s little hooks.
