This is not a passing aberration; this turkey story. Rather this is part if a larger issue, a core theme, a central topic in the 2012 GOP political debate.
To correct the inaccuracies that Fischer is pushing - all turkeys are slaughtered the SAME. There is NO PRAYER said over them, and they are not labeled as being different, because they are NOT different from the way non-religious designated meat iss always slaughtaered - (and not just turkeys) . Any turkeys tht are subsequently labeled Halal - OR KOSHER - have the pertinent religious requirements satisfied for such labeling at the retail distribution source, where the labeling is then, appropriately, noted.
In the case of Butterball turkeys, Butterball indicates this occurs primarily in other countries to which they sell turkeys; there are more than 20 other countries to which Butterball exports this American ag product.
Fischer was a prominent speaker at the Rick Perry Prayer event; he was a prominent speaker at the Values Voter Summit, where every political candidate in the GOP Presidential contest spoke, along with the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Islamophobia is a key part of a number of our would-be candidates, notably Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, Santorum. The only consistent exception has been Ron Paul, and he is highly unlikely to be the next GOP presidential candidate.
These candidates have a fundamentalist approach that would make Christianity and secular law identical. They would make a Christian version of our secular law which given NO religion a preference something different than what it is NOW. Frightening people over Sharia law and pseudo-Halal turkey is not different than some of the similar anti-Semitic tactics which used to target Jews.
This Halal turkey story is NOT going away, it is not merely a minor embarassment of a lone extremist. It IS part of a larger facet of conservative politics. It is a dog whistle; it is fear mongering, a straw man bogey man of hatred. In that sense, it is no different than the straw man effigy that conservative students burned in Scotland. This is just a different Islamic strawman, thrown on a different bonfire, a U.S. conservative bonfire.
These people throw around the word Freedoms constantly. But what they want to do is to take away freedom - freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, rule of non-partisan unbiased law.
We don't need religious crazy fundamentalists in the White House. We don't need race and ethnic or religious hatred in our politics.
I haven't gone looking for any studies yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a close correlation between being pro-gun, and anti-muslim/anti-sharia law, and those who are also pro-Christian dominionism/christian political evangelism. That excludes Jews, Muslims, and Mormons, and in some cases Roman Catholics. I'm not saying ALL pro-gunners are fundamentalist crazy haters and bigots, but there IS a significant overlap.