If you’re not from around Delaware, I don’t think you get the half-joking / half-serious animosity we have towards our neighbors from “The Garden State.” To be fair, I’m pretty sure they feel the same way about us… but I know Pennsylvania people hate Jersey too, so I think we’re on the winning side here.
I’ve dated girls from New Jersey and I’ve had friends from New Jersey, so I know that there are exceptions to the rule, but the stereotypes are being blown up into the biggest damned media events ever: Jersey Shore on MTV.
I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t watch MTV anymore… like, at all. I was bored one night when the MTV Music Awards were on, so I logged into Twitter and saw everyone railing on Kanye West for something he did. I flipped it on, found out what happened, watched Pink dangle from the ceiling, and then switched on a movie. Seriously… I don’t watch MTV since the “M” went from “music” to “mindless” about 15 years ago.
If I were to ever turn that channel on again, it would be to see what this Jersey Shore show is all about. I mean, I can’t escape these walking stereotypes of Italian douchebags who hang out at “tha shoah” (and, for the record, “Italian” in this sense is merely an adjective modifying the noun “douchebag”; “Italian” is not part of a compound word dictating that anyone Italian is a douchebag. Just wanted to clear that up…). Growing up in Delaware, I’ve been to The Jersey Shore a bunch of times and I have encountered many of these people (although, if I ever met anyone with the name of “The Situation,” I think I’d laugh so hard, I’d break a blood-vessel), but why in God’s name would you show off your douchebaggery for the world? There’s no surprise that the Italian-American Defamation League (or some similarly-named organization) is freaking out about the way these idiots are behaving. It’s not bad enough they have to deal with people who watch The Sopranos so much they feel that Italian automatically means you’re “in the family”, but now Italians have to put up with these idiots too?
Wow. Talk about your all-time sucks.
In any case, it really makes you wonder why America is embracing this trainwreck as much as they are. And, yes, folks… I haven’t heard one positive thing ABOUT this show; it sounds like everyone is watching it as an unintentional comedy! Maybe that’s it… maybe the viewers think that Dago/Guido/Wop stereotypes are the new blackface? I don’t know, but it should tell you something about the idiots who are in the show. Either they are fully taking control and saying “Yeah, we’re jokes, but we’re getting our 15 minutes” or they are blissfully ignorant and they think people actually look up to them; no matter what, the zeitgeist is all about them right now.
Hell… even Jay Leno is going to welcome them to his old/new Tonight Show on his first night back. It’s old home week for douchebags, I guess! Unreal. I think I’m gonna ignore the TV for a while and just read a book.