Keller @ Large: Elon Musk among this year's national turkeys
BOSTON - There are so many venerable Thanksgiving traditions - the Turkey Day Eve high-school reunions at local bars, Thanksgiving Day football rivalries, trying to guess the best time to make a break for it without getting stuck in highway gridlock.
And, of course, WBZ-TV's annual Turkeys of the Year awards.
Let's start with some prime turkeys from the national news scene:
ELON MUSK
From Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2021 to our top turkey list this year, it's been quite the implosion for Elon Musk, who's proving out the old saying that just because you're rich doesn't mean you're smart.
Musk's Twitter debacle is a classic turkey saga - a big, aggressive bird too dumb to know it's being fattened up for the kill. By the time he's through torching his $44 billion investment and the value of Tesla stock, Musk may have created a whole new economic genre - turkey-vulture capitalism.
ALEX JONES
"Why do you think Sandy Hook was a conspiracy?" an incredulous judge asked internet swindler and vicious pathological liar Alex Jones during one of his defamation trials. "Because I had seen so many other things in history that had been staged," he replied, a fitting epitaph for a con man who made millions from the gullibility of America's conspiracy theorists.
There was big money to be made from peddling lies about the horrific Sandy Hook massacre, so Jones went for it, smearing the grieving families and inspiring his followers to torment them. The term turkey seems inadequate to describe this creature, but one thing's for sure - now that Jones is on the hook for $1.5 billion in damages, his goose is cooked.
PEOPLE'S CONVOY
"A lot of people have died from COVID, and many more have died from the policies that were put in place to handle COVID," declared a speaker at a rally last winter for the so-called "People's Convoy," an effort inspired by anti-mandate trucker-led protests in Canada that paralyzed Ottawa.
The folks behind this convoy tried to do the same to Washington D.C. prior to the State of the Union address. But instead they answered the old question: what if they gave a war and nobody came? Turnout was sparse, the protest fizzled. Pass the cranberry sauce.
CHESA BOUDIN
"They were really frustrated about a lack of accountability for crimes that are committed in San Francisco," said that ultra-liberal city's mayor about the voters' decision to remove first-term District Attorney Chesa Boudin from office.
And no wonder. Residents and business owners quickly tired of their concerns over spiraling drug and property crime and vagrancy getting the brush off from Boudin. Former prosecutors from his office joined the recall movement. And they gave this turkey the boot.
WHAT'S NEXT
So many turkeys - too many to carve in one sitting! So on Wednesday, we're making room for a tasting of some of the top local turkeys of 2022. BYOB and join us.