I live in a household that not infrequently takes advantage of the many nights when Papa John’s offers half-priced or otherwise discounted pizzas based upon the results of D.C. sporting events. Jalapeños and olives was a favorite combination.
It may not be the best pizza in the world, if I’m being honest. But there’s the garlic butter sauce, and those hot pepper things, and it really is amazingly cheap with the sports discounts, plus you feel like you’re participating in a community event. We might not know all our neighbors or play Bingo at the Legion Hall here in Northwest D.C., but communal joy over Wiz50 and Caps50 can bring this fractured town together. And the leftovers reheated the next morning? Man. Life does have its pleasures.
Then came Pizzagate — okay, wait, no. That was something else.
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Then came Papagate, in which CEO “Papa” John “Papa John” “Papa” Schnatter blamed protesting NFL players for his company’s sagging sales. And suddenly a little slice of everything awful about 2017 was delivered to my door step, piping hot and dripping grease.
The Daily Stormer aligned itself with Papa John’s. So did others on the alt-right. There was suspicion that controversial Dallas owner Jerry Jones, a significant Papa John’s franchise owner, may have prompted Schnatter’s remarks. Many who sympathized with the protesting players — or who didn’t want to appear sympathetic to entities that were actively unsympathetic — decided they’d maybe rather not eat Papa John’s. Frozen pizza chains got involved. All that was solid melted into ... melted cheese? And our perpetual culture war claimed another piece of our happiness pie, without even asking for a discounted price. “Which side are you on, boys?” no longer referred to “pepperoni” vs. “veggie,” if it ever really did.
Because I try to keep my pizza and my politics distinct, this means that I haven’t ordered Papa John’s since the brick oven of societal unrest heated the crust of a peaceful family dinner into a dark soot of polarizing debate. Then came Tuesday night’s tweeted apology, in which the company said it wasn’t trying to be divisive, that it does believe in the right to protest inequality, and that it symbolically flicks off neo-Nazis, among other things.
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And so this leaves the socially conscious pizza consumer where exactly? I’m not sure that particular dough can be pulled out of the fire. I wanted to write a humorous column about how everything is awful, but the words wouldn’t come, so instead I turned this into a poem, inspired by poor Walt Whitman, who really doesn’t deserve to be linked to pizza wars, or Skins50, or anything having to do with this calendar year.
If you read it, you deserve a free piece of pizza. At least one. Your choice.
Oh Papa! My Papa!
O Papa! my Papa! our fearful month is done,
The brand has weather’d every slight, the tweets we sought are won,
The apology near, forgiveness here, the online mob abating,
And Caps50 and Wiz50 and Skins50 are waiting
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the ground my pizza lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
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O Papa! my Papa! rise up and hear the crowd;
Rise up, for you the game is played, for you the toppings earned
For you sausage and mushroom’d cheese, for you the phones a-ringing
For you they sob, the hungry mob, their open mouths watering
Here Papa! dear pizza maker!
This crowd does need be fed!
It is some dream that on the deck,
My pizza’s cold and dead.
My pizza does not answer, its free toppings cold and still
My pizza cannot earn my love, the butter tastes like swill
The Nazis flicked off safe and sound, their love now closed and done
But fearful folk remain well woke; they’ve found another one
Exult o ‘Hut, Ledo’s square cut
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the floor my Papa lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
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