MISCHARACTERIZING DEMOCRACY.

Milwaukee's Palermo's Pizza (disclaimer: frequently purchased frozen at Jewel for the Cold Spring Shops commissary) have been involved in some sort of labor dispute.  Although the legalities are mostly behind us, the Perpetually Aggrieved never miss an opportunity to be aggrieved, here holding a stand-in at one of the Palermo pizza stands on the Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, and engaging in the usual semi-literate chanting.  Democracy looks like unwashed people desiring food not to be sold, apparently.  The stand-in gave some diversity hustler in the UWM administration a chance to show his solidarity with Occupy types by ordering the stand be closed, leading a Milwaukee observer to quip, "UWM will serve jello instead of Palermo's."  Or both.

Now, UWM officials are saying the school continues to offer Palermo’s Pizza products for sale on campus.

UWM officials said in a statement released Thursday: “What has changed in the past two days is the availability of the pizza in the Student Union food court where a long planned renovation project got underway this week.”

UWM officials say the school did not intend on closing the pizza stand on Tuesday — “but because of the presence of protesters in the kitchen preparation area, it was determined that the food in the stand would need to be discarded because it had potentially been contaminated.  As a result, UWM administrators and police announced the stand was being closed.”

Because the pizza stand had been scheduled to close for the summer at the end of business on May 8th due to the renovation project, UWM administrators made the decision not to open the stand for one additional day — and closed it on Tuesday.

Playing in the middle of the road is a good way to be hit by traffic going both ways. With final exams approaching, perhaps the Perpetually Aggrieved will take their victory, such as it is.  But with the job market for college graduates being what it is, we've probably not seen the last of the Palermo shuffle in Wisconsin.

The Madison campus continues to serve Palermo pizza, although with Paisan's available not far from campus, why would anyone bother?