A reader writes:

And notice the symbolism of the three boxes in his hands, one for each branch of government. You’ve convinced me; it is a conspiracy.

Laura writes:

It’s only a matter of time before every man, woman and child is entitled to free pizza, courtesy of our federal government.

Eric writes:

Here’s Exhibit B.

And Exhibit C.

Karen I. writes:

Many children are already entitled to free pizza every week, courtesy of our government. In our school district, about 40% of children receive free or reduced price lunch, which includes pizza every Friday.

Laura writes:

The pizzafication of America precedes Obama and has the support of both political parties. We’re trapped.

Buck writes:

I don’t remember exactly how it started, but the other day I bit into a search thread on “pizza” via google. I thought it would be thin, but it was thick and layered with topics. There’s a depth to pizza that I hadn’t imagined. History, religious studies, culture and literature are all aspects of the subject. Pizza studies.

It transcends food. The “pizza effect“: “The process by which cultural exports are transformed and reimported to their culture of origin, or the way in which a community’s self-understanding is influenced by (or imposed by, or imported from) foreign sources.” Otherwise known as “hermeneutical feedback loop,” “re-enculturation,” and “self-orientalization.”

From The Aeneid by Virgil:

two translations:

When the poor fare drove them to set their teeth
into the thin discs, the rest being eaten, and to break
the fateful circles of bread boldly with hands and jaws,
not sparing the quartered cakes, Iulus, jokingly,
said no more than: ‘Ha! Are we eating the tables too?’

and:

Beneath a shady tree, the hero spread
His table on the turf, with cakes of bread;
And, with his chiefs, on forest fruits he fed.
They sate; and, (not without the god’s command,)
Their homely fare dispatch’d, the hungry band
Invade their trenchers next, and soon devour,
To mend the scanty meal, their cakes of flour.
Ascanius this observ’d, and smiling said:
“See, we devour the plates on which we fed.”

It’s not simply pizza anymore.

Laura writes:

This is most excellent, comrade.

I am very pleased with the depth of your research.  And, you immediately reported your findings back to the group, as you should. We are most enlightened.

The pizza effect is “the way in which a community’s self-understanding is influenced by (or imposed by, or imported from) foreign sources.” From Wikipedia:

Just as it was Americans who made the elaborate pizza and then mistook it for an indigenous Italian product and just as Italians have co-opted the American pizza and now make it for American tourists, so also it was Westerners who created the rational protestant Buddhism of modern Sri Lanka and then mistook it for an indigenous Sri Lankan product, and so also did a Sri Lankan Buddhist spokesman, Dharmapala, sell this protestantized Buddhism back to West when he appeared at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893. There are several other examples…”[8]:xvi

Am I misreading this or is the basic point here that there is a worldwide conspiracy to … sell pizza? Of course!

Nevertheless, we amateurs can hardly do the subject justice. We must turn to the poets, the great thinkers, to Madame Blavatsky herself to understand this hermeneutical feedback loop. Even Virgil looked upon these “fateful circles of bread” with intense interest. Pizza studies professors will someday look back upon his words with deep gratitude.

Please follow and like us: