Pardons aren't just for turkeys: Which celebrities should get a pass - or not - this Thanksgiving?

Which celebrities deserve a second chance after some fumbles this year? Photos / AP

Every year, one or two lucky birds are spared from the Thanksgiving table by gobbling up an official presidential pardon - which got us thinking about great escapes and whether everyone deserves a second chance this holiday season. (Spoiler alert: Nope.) In that spirit, we've suggested the celebrities who might be candidates for a free pass (what's the celebrity equivalent of a stint at a bucolic farm?) and whether we think they should get one.

Pete Davidson

Pardoned: The Saturday Night Live cast member made a terrible joke about then-congressional candidate Dan Crenshaw, a veteran who lost an eye in Afghanistan. It was really bad and no one (not even Davidson's fellow SNLer Kenan Thompson) was laughing. For a while there, it looked as if Davidson, who remained mum during the week-long controversy, wouldn't issue an apology to the man he offended. But the two men buried the hatchet live on-air in a Weekend Update segment that proved mea culpas can be earnest and funny.

Kanye West

Not sure: Oh, Kanye. The rapper has been in hot water since pondering aloud that slavery was "a choice." It's gone downhill for the rapper since then with the MAGA hat, the rant about the MAGA hat and the White House presser about the rant about the MAGA hat. Also that "Blexit" T-shirt and Candace Owens. Sigh. But just recently, West gave $150,000 to a fund created for the funeral of a black security guard killed by police officers in the rapper's beloved hometown of Chicago. So maybe there's hope yet.

The White House Correspondents' Association dinner

Not pardoned: What is happening with this thing? The rubber chicken dinner with a heavy dose of celebrity glitz is officially dead now, right? After last year's featured comedian, Michelle Wolf, roasted the Trump administration to a burned crisp, the association has flipped the script and nixed the jokey portion of the evening altogether. Why not throw the entire evening in the garbage?

Omarosa Manigualt Newman

Not pardoned: The original bad girl of reality TV has made a career out of being hated, first on Donald Trump's NBC show, The Apprentice, and then on his Washington show, The White House. It's been a rough ride for the former staffer who staged a bridal photo shoot at the White House and was fired less than a year later. She tried to redeem herself by writing a tell-all book about how terrible her former boss was, but it didn't do much for her public image overhaul. Anyone willing to secretly tape her colleagues is officially on the naughty list. And we're not convinced Omarosa wouldn't return to the Trump show for the right role.

Taylor Swift

Pardoned: For years, Taylor's haters bemoaned the fact that the pop megastar would not get into the muck of politics. She famously stayed mum on her ballot beliefs and steered clear of any policy controversy. For many that was a knock against Taylor's authentic lady-power marketing machine. Then came the 2018 midterms and the singer's social media post heard 'round the world in which she voiced support for two Tennessee Democrats for Congress.It was a bold move that may have contributed to a bump in voter registration. Snaps for Tay.

Kim Kardashian

Pardoned: How easy it is to dismiss the queen of reality TV as an empty catsuit who's only famous for being famous. But KK(W) proved all the haters wrong this year, when she turned out to be the rare person who could actually make Washington function again. Unlike the endless parade of celebrities who show up in our fair swamp to talk about their causes, Kardashian got things done, meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to help get the life sentence commuted for Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old great grandmother in prison for drug trafficking. (See what we did here? She got pardoned for securing a pardon.) And it wasn't all done for the cameras: Kardashian's krusade included plenty of behind-the-scenes research and string-pulling - and she's still working on issues of criminal justice reform.

Roseanne Barr

Not pardoned: The actress/comedian single-tweetedly got the reboot of her titular sitcom Roseanne cancelled after a racist missive targeting Valerie Jarrett, the former top adviser to President Barack Obama. In a bizarre series of social-media rants, Barr apologised and swore off Twitter, only to immediately return to offer up excuses (it was the Ambien talking! She didn't know Jarrett was black!) and lashed out at co-stars from the show, whose jobs she was responsible for losing. A Roseanne-less spinoff The Conners soon arose from the ashes, but it hasn't nabbed the ratings that its predecessor did.

Melania Trump

Not pardoned: The first lady has made kindness and combating online bullying a central part of her platform, an interesting choice given her husband's penchant for mean tweeting. But the former fashion model has made some aggressive moves of her own, ticking off what seemed like half the world when she sported a jacket emblazoned with the phrase "I really don't care, do u?" on the way to a visit to a facility on the border where immigrant children were being housed. And just this month, she forced out the deputy national security adviser by having her spokeswoman release a statement saying the woman "no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House" over a dust-up with her staff. "It's always good to turn negativity to positivity," she told a group of teens last week, without the slightest trace of irony.

Megyn Kelly

Not pardoned: The former Today host was ousted from the morning show family following her on-air pondering of whether blackface is acceptable for Halloween. Hint: It isn't - on Halloween or ever in life. The former Fox News anchor issued an apology but the ensuing backlash (and bad ratings) ushered Kelly out the door in October. She's stayed pretty quiet since but there's no telling where the woman who described herself (in her apology no less) as not "a PC kind of person" will land next to spew more good holiday cheer like the fact that Santa isn't white.

Sacha Baron Cohen

Pardoned: The comedian and con man is on just about every conservative dupes' naughty list. Cohen's latest guerrilla comedy show, Who Is America?, made a fool of plenty of politicians, including Roy Moore, who is apparently suing the serial prankster for $95 million, and former Georgia state representative Jason Spencer, who resigned after his racist and pantsless appearance on the series. But if Cohen did anything right, it's expose some dark truths in a time of fake news and foolishness.