Sarah Palin and Donald Trump met in New York City this past week to discuss something. No one is saying what they discussed, so it is up to good old-fashioned rumor and innuendo to illuminate the topics of conversation. The first stop on Palin’s itinerary was Trump’s apartment, which is the top three stories of the tallest apartment building in NYC. As they gazed out the window, it is reported that Trump pointed out that they could actually see Jersey. To which Palin replied, “I am not even going to tell you what you can see from Alaska.”
It seems, the double-dip real estate bust has hit Trump hard. He reportedly has been firing some highly visible unpaid interns within his company. Trump invited Palin to dinner for some “real American food.” They stopped at a pizzeria well known for its New York style pizza.
American’s, especially those living in Large Urban Areas, have lost sight of the cultural origins of many foods. Take polenta for instance. When I was growing up and we did not have much in liquid assets, my mother would boil corn meal into mush. Then she would make a circle of it on a plate, cover it in tomato sauce. “Polenta, my father would say, it is a staple in Italy.” Which, I think, meant, “it is what poor people in Italy eat.” Amazingly enough, the food section in the newspaper carried a long article about the latest in Italian cuisine sweeping major cities. Polenta. The food critic could not stop raving about it.
Now take pizza. In Italy, it is leftovers. If you have a refrigerator full of leftovers, you roll out a piece of dough, coat it with sauce so everything will stick, open the refrigerator and start tossing stuff on top of the dough. Finally, you cover it with cheese to fool the children into eating it.
New Yorkers make their pizza with a thin crust, and few toppings, so you have to fold it to eat it. Chicagoans make theirs in deep dishes (it seems that, they have more leftovers than New Yorkers.) By the time pizza makes it to the west coast they put so much weird stuff on top that no one eats in the first place it can hardly be called leftovers.
It is a good thing that they ate pizza. It gave the normal American a chance to observe these odd species in our own natural habitat. Palin cut the tiniest piece of pizza and furtively put it in her mouth, glancing furtively around to see if anyone was watching; which was silly, since there were more cameras in the pie joint then there were slices of pepperoni on the pizza. It appears that she had never seen a pizza before, and in fact it is rumored she said to Trump, “Alaska is closer to Russia than it is to America, so this—what do you call it—pizza is kind of strange.”
Trump very adroitly never touched his piece of pie. It is alleged that he said, “I ain’t eating no leftovers.”
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