Evildoers across the country breathed a sigh of relief on Monday when Jimmy Kimmel announced he was taking a step back from the political stage to focus on Kardashian jokes—but their victory was short-lived. The very day the Graham-Cassidy bill finally gave up the ghost, Kimmel launched a new moral crusade, with a new teary-eyed monologue about an even more terrifying threat than the Republican Party: pumpkin spice pizza.
This is a real thing that Villa Italian Kitchen is selling, and it’s a shame it took a TV host to bring it to the nation’s attention. But Kimmel has clearly learned a great deal about political leadership during the health care debate, and does a wonderful job here of sounding the alarm. He borrows freely from leaders on both sides of the aisle, from a call for unity that’s worthy of Obama (“Whether or not you think pumpkin spice is good on pizza, I think we can all agree that pumpkin spice is not good on pizza, okay?”) to a Reaganesque anecdote about a poor Midwestern child whose first bite of pizza is pumpkin spice flavor. With tears in his eyes, Kimmel once again urged his audience to call their senators and demand that something be done immediately, all promises of Kardashian jokes cast aside in the face of new dangers.
A day may come when the courage of Jimmy Kimmel fails, when he forsakes his friends and just lets companies sell whatever garbage pizza flavors they want without raising a fuss. But it is not this day.
Here are Jimmy Kimmel’s complete remarks on the matter of pumpkin spice pizza:
There is another threat on the horizon that is maybe even more disturbing than anything we’ve seen in congress this week. And that is this. Put this up. That is, yeah. That’s pumpkin spice pizza. This is a real item on a menu at a restaurant called Villa Italian Kitchen, where someone—I don’t know who, probably a monster—decided it would be a good idea to combine pumpkin spice and pizza, two things that go together like peanut butter and snow tires, okay? This restaurant apparently has 230 locations, some of them here in L.A. And whether or not you think pumpkin spice is good on pizza, I think we can all agree that pumpkin spice is not good on pizza, okay?
Is nothing sacred? I don’t even believe they did this on purpose. I bet a delivery guy spilled his latte on an order and refused to admit that he screwed up. But imagine a child born in like, Indiana, or someplace where they don’t know anything about pizza. Innocently, she goes to the mall with her family. And she tries pizza for the first time. And it’s that pizza. It’s pumpkin spice. And she hates it—she wastes years of her life thinking pizza tastes like nutmeg. And she never tries it again. What about that child?
So I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to pick up your phones and call your senators again. Tell them we will not stand for pumpkin spice pizza. Let’s make pizza great again, ok? And God Bless the United States of America.
