Everything ends in pizza - São Paulo

Yesterday morning I sat down to read the Folha de São Paulo at my local bakery. Folha, as most of you know, is the daily newspaper that I love to ummm, tweak. If you want to know why I am biased against it, you'll have to look back at a little editorial they ran a few years back about how the city being largely without internet for three days was a "Technological 9/11". One might see how an American would not find humor in that image since internet failure vs. people throwing themselves out of buildings is really not the same level of distress.

But I digress. I opened up the paper and there was a huge photo on the front with headlines about the Mensalão scandal. Again, I would be out of my league to try to give the details of the scandal, but the general idea is that some politicians who were very corrupt were convicted as being very corrupt and sentenced to prison. Then the supreme court re-looked at some of the charges, and the last judge who waffled around for a few days (unlike the US, apparently judges can come back with their decisions at separate times) broke the tie with a vote for "yes", let's re-look at these charges and maybe some of these bad guys won't have to go to prison. They can spend a few years under house arrest. Judgement on this is not expected until early next year.

This is a big deal. This is not Dilma saying no, I won't break bread with you, Mr. Obama, because you read my e-mail. This is justice at its worst. And yes it happens in the US too. I is an emotional and disastrous result of a long and seemingly certain road to bringing bad politicians to justice for corruption. Now they get to stay in "home prison" and probably eat pizza.

Speaking of pizza, let me look at that first photo again. It is a protester chucking pizza at the supreme court building. What? Not eggs? Pizza? What a waste. I am laughing about this, and then realize I must be missing something. An email is sent off to the Brazilian husband (who is out of the country): Is there a significance to throwing pizza? Yes, the response is, there is. Turns out there is a wonderful expression in Portuguese that goes like this "Everything ends in pizza." I like it even before I know what it means.

Where did it come from? According to my online sources (of middling to high confidence level), the phrase came from a newspaper article about a political dispute in the Palmeiras Football Club in the 1960s. No, I don't know if Folha was responsible. Though I'd like to find out.

Look, I digressed again. Wow, I am going to get in trouble for defamation one day. Anyway, there was huge fight in the Palmeiras club with lots of accusations flying from both sides. While the reporter was there watching the fight, the two sides finally made their peace. And to celebrate the peace, they went to a pizzeria to celebrate. The next day, the newspaper published an article with the title "Briga no Palmeiras termina em pizza. ("Fight in Palmeiras ends in pizza" )

Over time the expression began to be used for political scandals that build into huge fights...and then work out in the end to be just fine for all parties involved. So the protester was saying "hey nice for you politicians, it has again all ended in pizza all around." No one pays for their corruption.

Apparently the expression has even changed from an earlier version of "everything ends in samba." Either way, it is a brilliant image of an unhappy protester. Tudo termina em pizza.