In a Daily Show segment earlier this week about New York’s Freedom Tower being named the tallest building in the United States—thus ousting Chicago’s Sears/Willis Tower from the top spot—Jon Stewart took the opportunity to stick it to the Windy City on another front: pizza. “Deep-dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza,” Stewart said, “it’s not pizza.”
The most overlooked point in this eternal pizza war is the fact that both cities have more than their fair share of lousy pizza places, but New York pizza does at least have the potential to be good. Conversely, the loveless pile of ingredients known as Chicago pizza is essentially a constipated grimace in edible form.
In any case, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has his city’s honor to defend. As Defamer reports, Emanuel sent a couple of deep-dish pies to the West Side studios of The Daily Show. “Deep dish with dead fish. Love, Rahm,” read the note.
That’s either a puckish insult or a tacit admission that Chicago pizza is indeed terrible; it’s hard to tell. But the show erred on the safe side by refusing to let Emanuel get the last word, posting this Vine of an office dog’s reaction to the anchovy-laden slop.
So yes, The Daily Show is funnier than a career politician, but that is the show’s raison d'être, after all. If it’s any consolation to Emanuel, I used to work next to that dog, and I can attest that he’s pretty smelly, so it’s not exactly an endorsement the mayor ought to covet.