# Post turtle

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{{Short description|Political joke}}
[[File:Kunyang - Zheng He Park - P1350534.JPG|thumb|Stone turtle on a fence post, a design in a park in [Kunyang](/source/Kunyang_Subdistrict), [Yunnan](/source/Yunnan)]]
"'''Post turtle'''" is a phrase that has been used in the political discourse of various countries based on an old joke about the leader of a group being comparable to a turtle balanced on top of a fence post. <ref name="PostTurtle02">{{cite news |author=Kennedy, William |newspaper=The New York Times |date=March 24, 2002 |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E4D91039F937A15750C0A9649C8B63 |title=The Turtle on the Fence Post |access-date=February 18, 2017 |archive-date=December 2, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071202135819/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E4D91039F937A15750C0A9649C8B63 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The crux of the joke is that both the Politician and the Post Turtle:
* Did not get to their position on accident.
* Did not get to their position on their own.
* Are unable to remove themselves from their current position.
* Cannot do anything useful from their position
* Should not be in their position.

==History==
On ''Good Morning America'' in 1998, [Hillary Clinton](/source/Hillary_Clinton) said, "If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn't get there by accident, and I just look at the landscape around here, and I see just lots of big old turtles sitting on lots of fence posts, and I think we need to find out how those old turtles got on those fence posts."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD7lI1kR2qQ | title=Hillary Clinton talks about turtles on fence posts | website=[YouTube](/source/YouTube) | date=21 August 2013 }}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

Category:Political terminology
Category:Political satire
Category:Metaphors referring to animals
Category:Political metaphors
Category:Political catchphrases
Category:Turtles in popular culture

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Post turtle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_turtle) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_turtle?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.