Seinfeld wasn’t usually recognized for weighing in on necessary points that really have an effect on individuals’s lives — until after all you take into account masturbation contests and surgical procedures being disrupted by projectile Junior Mints to be “necessary points.” However the sixth season episode “The Sofa” dove head-first into the abortion debate. And in addition the far less-important “dishonest in your girlfriend’s e book membership” debate.
The episode begins with Jerry and Elaine eating at Poppie’s restaurant. When Jerry mentions the title of a well-liked pizza chain, Elaine insists that he shouldn’t ever order from them once more as a result of “the proprietor contributes some huge cash to these fanatical anti-abortion teams.” After Elaine discovers that Poppie, the Italian culinary whiz with an aversion at hand washing, can also be anti-choice, she storms out of the restaurant, as do a number of different diners.
This all builds to a scene through which Kramer and Poppie meet to debate their “construct your individual pizza” restaurant and find yourself arguing over physique autonomy through a pizza-based allegory, with Poppie arguing that “you’ll be able to’t give individuals the precise to decide on any topping they need.”
“What provides you the precise to inform me how I might make my pie?” Kramer passionately counters.
Viewers at the moment won’t remember that the memorable storyline mirrored an precise information story from the time, and it actually did contain abortion and pizza.
In keeping with Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Larry David was impressed to jot down “The Sofa” after studying that Domino’s founder and CEO Thomas Monaghan had donated “substantial quantities of cash to anti-abortion teams,” together with the acute Operation Rescue and its “marketing campaign of lawlessness.”
After Monaghan “helped finance a referendum drive ending Medicaid-funded abortions in Michigan,” the Nationwide Group of Ladies known as for a boycott of Domino’s in 1989. A spokesperson for the pizza chain argued that Domino’s as an organization by no means truly supported any anti-abortion teams, and that the boycott may damage franchisees who “may even be sympathetic to their trigger.” However clearly Monaghan nonetheless profited from pizza gross sales and used stated revenue for his donations.
It’s unclear whether or not or not the Domino’s Noid was pro-choice or not.
Maybe not coincidentally, Monaghan stepped down because the CEO of Domino’s that very same 12 months so as to “commit himself full time” to the Catholic Church. And he offered most of his stake within the firm in 1998. However the controversy clearly nonetheless dogged Domino’s, seeing as how they needed to tackle the difficulty in an early model of their on-line FAQ, which famous that “Domino’s Pizza LLC has by no means supported organizations on both facet of the reproductive rights challenge.”
However so far as we all know, no one concerned with Domino’s ever received so wired concerning the boycott that they relieved themselves on a good friend’s couch.
You (sure, you) ought to observe JM on Twitter (if it nonetheless exists by the point you’re studying this).
