Pizza Won

I watched RTL cut off a live interview with the Chancellor to cover pizza. This was August 2015, when Germany was watching refugee homes burn, when kids were getting attacked in the street, when something actually felt wrong. Merkel had driven to Heidenau to make a public stand against it. Their afternoon magazine show had her on live. Then they killed the segment for a pizza story.

The network that filled its daytime with humiliation—poor people solving crimes, unqualified hosts digging into their lives—suddenly didn’t have room for serious news. Not because they were busy with something better. They just weren’t interested. Pizza was lighter, easier, less demanding. Pizza won.

I kept waiting for irony, for some sign that everyone understood how bad this looked. But I don’t think they did. RTL’s people probably felt competent: the interview happened, the pizza news happened, decent programming. The distance between a country in crisis and a food story had just stopped existing to them. Everything felt the same level.

And this is what happens when you run something long enough—television, politics, a magazine, your own life. You stop being able to tell what matters. Scale collapses. Everything flattens. Pizza and the government and your own future all start to feel like the same weight. And then pizza wins.