I Apologize in Advance—with Cate Lunt
Sunday, November 18, 2007
By Cate Lunt
Oh, crap. I’ve been so busy with my consciousness-raising campaign that I just plumb forgot to write a column. I know it sounds bad, but it’ll never happen again. In trying to fill the space, I called around to get permission to run someone else’s stuff, and unfortunately the only article I could get was this column by world-famous foreign policy columnist Fromas Thiedman. Yeah. Really sorry. He’s won like twenty Pulitzers; I have no idea how. Anyway, brace yourselves. Here’s Fromas.
***
I was busy being a foreign correspondent in Bangalore a few weeks ago, sitting in my hotel room and snarfing down some room-service dosas when I decided to call my friend Arjuna, an accomplished political economist.
“Arjuna,” I said when he zipped into the room, “what can you tell me about the to-do in what’s-it-called?”
“Uh, are you referring perhaps the conflict in Kashmir, Fromas?” he suggested helpfully, “I haven’t studied it in depth, but some of my colleagues have led me to believe that it may be heating up.”
“Interesting,” I said as I chewed and gazed thoughtfully out the window, “Interesting. You know how I say the world is flat, don’t you, Arjuna?”
He responded in the affirmative.
“And now you’re telling me it’s heating up.”
“Well, I would only apply that analysis only to the prov—”
“But what,” I pondered with great energy, “Is both flat and heating up? Circular, too. It was implicit in my ‘world is flat’ argument that the world is a two-dimensional circle.”
Then it hit me.
“Oh my God, Arjuna,” I practically spat with joy, “I think I’m starting to see what you’re telling me: the world is a pizza!”
“Er, Fromas,” he said, but I couldn’t hear the words coming out of his subcontinental trap. I knew this was the metaphor I’d been looking for. It was so compelling it made The World is Flat look like mere child’s play.
Folks, I now say, waving Arjuna out of the room; folks, the world is a pizza. What, you say. That’s just ridiculous. But it hangs together. Check it out.
We’ve got technology and globalization, right? That’s the crust because it rises, but we need to punch and knead it for it do so, which represents intelligent regulation. But hardly anyone except the hard-core geeks want to eat technology unless there’s some sort of interesting content involved. That’s where ideas and innovation come in, or, as I like to call them, the delicious red sauce of ideas and innovation. Yeah, slather it all over that crust. Missed a spot. Right over there. Thanks. But we need non-governmental organizations to assist in things like charity and human rights work, by which I mean the truly scrumptious gobs of cheese of non-governmental organizations. Mmm. Then we’ve got all the toppings. Pepperoni, like US power, should be used sparingly, because an excess of it means a greasy pizza, which causes heartburn or (allegorically) blowback. Chicken represents fundamentalism because in my opinion chicken does not belong on pizza as it’s liable to become dry and tasteless unless it’s slathered in some sort of foul sauce, which represents theocracy. Pineapple slices represent Hawaii. Anchovies are the Law of the Sea Treaty.
Now, folks, let me be straight with you: our generation has just not responded to the world-as-pizza phenomenon. By which I mean, the president has not stepped to a podium and said, “Folks, the world is a pizza. I was wrong to ignore that fact for so long. It’s just a big frickin’ pizza—that’s the operative metaphor, and Fromas Thiedman called it before anyone.”
And let me tell you something. We may not feel the wrath of my metaphor now. Or even soon. Or ever. But someone maybe definitely will someday. The mozzarella gobs will melt and destroy our children because they failed to properly upgrade to Anchovies 2.0. Until we balance the economics of tomato sauce and the cultural evolution of spicy, slow-roasted Italian sausage, folks, we can look forward to stuffed-crust terrorists and Indian telecom workers pouring excessive amounts of hot pepper flakes over the last pitiful slice of American pizza, which will burn our tongue. And the Coca-Cola of democracy or the Mountain Dew of Christian evangelism will not placate the sensation—for the carbonation just aggravates the burning—until we are forced to ask the waiter of historical chance for what I like to call “the glass of water of crypto-fascism” (GWC-F). It’ll most likely spill onto our Crotch of the Social Safety Net, and the Napkin Holder of Trade Regimes will be empty. And we’ll have to walk home with in that embarrassing condition, not having money for a cab. Don’t let it happen, America.
Yikes. Sorry about that, “folks.” I’ll be back on the justice beat in a fortnight or so. – C. L. n
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