Sliding by on grease

We got the Guiteau stuff out of the way, but the bullshit keeps rolling in:

CLEVELAND --  Papa John's Pizza issued an apology to Cleveland and the Cavaliers for making T-shirts with LeBron James' number and the word "crybaby" under it.
To apologize, Papa John's will sell Cleveland residents a large, one-topping pizza for 23 cents on Thursday. The 23 is an homage to James' jersey number. The company also will donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund.

What? This entire thing is more contrived than the Cyrus contretemps. If, Papa John's Pizza were, say, a cousin who'd had about eight too many Natty Lites at your cookout, and called your sister-in-law a whore, an apology would be in order.* But this is a large multinational corporation, which went to considerable effort and expense to make these shirts. Meetings were had,  things were run past legal. Did not happen by accident. The predictable kerfuffle, and predictable apology, generate predictable publicity for what may be the worst thing ever to disgrace the word "pizza." (The dipping sauces should be a tipoff that it's about the diabetes, not the flavor.) Any Clevelander that takes advantage of this deal is a sucker, since PJ's is still covering ingreident costs at 23 cents a pie. On the upside, feasting on Papa Johns will likely force Cavs fan to spend a long time in a room without a television, meaning they will not have to witness the beatdown the Cavs will suffer at the hands of the Celtics.**

*No idea where the "I'm sorry I got drunk and called your sister-in-law a whore" cards come from.

**On an unrelated note -- go Penguins!

Comments

[Jon Eick]

I think the whole point is there were no meetings at the corporate office where they decided to print these t-shirts, nor was anything run past legal. All indications are that these shirts were printed up by Papa John's franchise owners in DC without any permission from corporate.

[The Gurgling Cod]

How many shirts were there? I thought it was one of those deals where they put one on every seat. Under that impression, I assumed it was a decision made fairly high up the PJ food chain, in that it would require considerable resources to get somewhere in the teens of thousands of shirts printed and distributed on short notice.

[BK]

"Go Penguins" my ass. You wanna go!?

[The Gurgling Cod]

Nope:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patrice_Bergeron&action=edit&section=1
Go Penguins.

[SBaker63]

I can't believe the first comment.

Jon Eick is exactly right, this was not approved... Gurgling Cod, I was told there were about 5 shirts.

From my understanding there weren't meetings and high up food chain things going on here. As with most pizza chains, Papa John's is made up of many franchisees. Washington DC is a franchise, not corporate. Corporate owns the Cleveland market... duh would they ALLOW someone to hurt their business knowingly.

FYI the average 1 Topping Large Pizza cost $2.80 to make with food and paper products and doesn't cover overhead or labor. .23 hardly covers any cost and even if it did it wouldn't matter because Papa John's is donating each sale to the Cleveland Cavaliers Youth fund that day along with an additional 10K!

[Kate]

I happen to think LEBRON JAMES IS AN AMAZING ATHELETE and people should back off.
Papa Johns deserves to be humiliated for this.