Pizza and Progressives

[Content Note: Classism; homophobia.]

So, one of the common responses I'm seeing—mostly on Twitter, although it came up in comments here, too—to the Indiana pizza place refusing service is: "Har har who even has pizza at a wedding?"

Poor people.

That's who has pizza at a wedding.

I mean, some people who have money to spend, but just want a casual wedding, have pizza at their wedding receptions, too.

But.

It's not unusual around here to see weddings, or funerals, catered by a pizza place. Pizza is all that many people can afford.

Weddings are often held in church basements, or the lodges of community organizations, or at VFW halls. Because that's also what people can afford.

Pizza, fried chicken, tacos, mostaccioli, giant trays of roast beef, potato salad, mixed greens. This is a pretty standard menu for lots of wedding receptions, funeral dinners, graduation open houses, church picnics, showers, retirements.

When people can't even afford pizza, we do pot-lucks. Everyone brings something, to celebrate.

That isn't unique to Indiana, of course. It's one of many places across the country where this is part of the culture.

By necessity.

This smug guffawing at the idea of catered pizza is just another indication that people don't understand and don't care about this state. This culture.

And it's many of the same people advocating withholding money from Hoosiers with a boycott who are then turning around and laughing at people who can't afford upscale catering.

Just stop. Please. Stop with the classist shit. It's so ugly.

Progressives should be ashamed of ourselves that the best we can do is laugh and point at poor people.

(And lest one imagine otherwise, plenty of the people whose celebrations I've attended with exactly that sort of catering are queer Hoosiers. This rhetorical buckshot is hitting the very people about whom they presume to care so much that they must boycott our state.)

I was told on social media that this rank classism is not intentional. It's "unwitting." What a neat word. What a useful word to elide what is, in actuality, cultivated ignorance against a "flyover" state not worthy of knowing.