SPIRIT OF THANKSGIVING

Christopher Hitchens, eloquent as ever, in the Wall St Journal:

I myself always concentrate on the dry wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, who once proposed that the turkey instead of the eagle should be the American national bird. After all, as he noted, the eagle is an inedible and arrogant predator whereas the turkey is harmless to others, nutritious, thrifty, industrious and profuse. Pausing only to think of the variable slogans here ("Where Turkeys Dare"; "The Turkey Has Landed"; "On Wings of Turkeys" and, by a stretch, "Legal Turkeys") I marvel to think that a nation so potentially strong could have had a Founding Father who was so irreverent.I also wish that I liked turkey. But there is always stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy -- to be eked out by pumpkin pie, which I also wish I could pretend to relish.

Indeed, it is the sheer modesty of the occasion that partly recommends it. Everybody knows what's coming. Nobody acts as if caviar and venison are about to be served, rammed home by syllabub and fine Madeira. The whole point is that one forces down, at an odd hour of the afternoon, the sort of food that even the least discriminating diner in a restaurant would never order by choice.

CINEMATIC PS: If you're seeking holiday entertainment, my friend Martha Bayles, of Serious Popcorn, recommends Crash and What's Cooking? Quite a study in contrasts:

Read the reviews, and you will conclude that Crash is a better film than What's Cooking? Why? Because Art (upper-case A) rubs our noses in grim reality, and entertainment (strictly lower-case e) coddles us with feel-good fluff. Well, there is such a thing as feel-good fluff, and for a long time I avoided seeing What's Cooking? because I assumed it would coddle me, and being coddled makes me grim.

I was wrong. There is a third category, one not generally acknowledged by the herd of independent critics: the category of delight.

"The herd of independent critics..."? What a delicious phrase.

Comments

[Fausta]

I feel the same way about roast beef and Yorkshire pudd.