Benjamin Franklin et les "fake news": le choix de la dinde comme oiseau emblématique pour les États-Unis

Je dois le reconnaître bien modestement, j'ai enseigné des dizaines des fois que lors du choix de l'oiseau emblématique pour les États-Unis Benjamin Franklin préférait la dinde à l'aigle. Selon des experts de l'Université Harvard j'étais dans l'erreur et je continuais à faire circuler, comme bien d'autres, une des plus vielles "fake news" de l'histoire des États-Unis. À la veille de l'action de grâce aux États-Unis le Washington Post relaye la position des historiens qui contredisent ce vieux mythe. Les paroles de Franklin dont je m'inspirais pour appuyer mon enseignement on bien été écrites, mais elles devaient être replacées dans le contexte d'une blague...

 "Well, according to the Harvard project and Franklin biographers, that dates back to a letter Franklin sent his daughter in which he wrote: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly.” As for the turkey, Franklin wrote that it “was a much more respectable Bird.”

Those few sentences are the quotes that have been passed down through history. But the letter itself — and in its entirety — had nothing to do with the national seal. Franklin, a known jokester, was being Seinfeld-like in an attempt to denigrate the seal of a hereditary club called the Society of the Cincinnati.

“The joke,” according to the Harvard project, “is based in the idea that the Society’s symbol appeared to some to look more like a turkey than an eagle.”

  Guess you had to be there.

Anyway, even with the turkey misunderstanding now cleared up, the history of Franklin and turkeys cannot be considered complete until another chapter is examined: His wanton execution of them."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/21/ben-franklin-didnt-champion-turkeys-fact-they-never-survived-encounters-with-him/?utm_term=.e561d4e839a4