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TagsBY BOB McHUGH
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
I love the Jersey Shore, which is why I hate Snooki.
My parents took me to the Shore when I was in diapers. I learned to swim in Barnegat Bay. I surfed off the Spring Lake boardwalk and worked summers on Casino Pier. I ate hotdogs at Max’s and the Windmill and was a regular at Mike’s Subs in Point Pleasant long before it became the 500-store “Jersey” Mike’s. I lived in Mantoloking. Metedeconk and Midstreams. I worked at the Asbury Park Press and I saw Springsteen at the Stone Pony a half dozen times.
Snooki, on the other hand, lives in New York.
Despite her glaring lack of bona fides, this young lady has somehow caught on as the most popular member of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” a “reality” show. I’m not sure anybody can say how Snooki, aka Nicole Catherine Polizzi, rose to the top. In one episode, she gets popped by the cops in Seaside Heights for public drunkenness; in another, she gets punched in the face by a guy in a bar. (It’s a reality show.)
She’s not a particularly attractive woman and, as an actor, she’s unlikely to be asked to read parts that earlier might have gone to Meryl Streep. But Snooki’s work has earned her $30,000 an episode and made “Jersey Shore” the most popular show in MTV history. “Rolling Stone” magazine put her on a recent cover. (They put John Lennon on their very first cover, but I guess that says more about the magazine than who they put on the cover.)
Of course “Jersey Shore” isn’t really about the Jersey Shore. Those dopey kids couldn’t tell Avon from Avalon or James from Fralingers. The show glamorizes the “guido” lifestyle, guido being Shore lingo for mostly Italian, mostly tattooed and mostly unruly kids who come “down the Shore” in the summer to party and pee in the street.
You can look up the “I Hate Guidos” page on Facebook and also purchase various t-shirts of the same sentiment.
But forget guidos. Here’s what the Jersey Shore IS about:
It’s about sand and subs. It’s about the Kohr’s girls in their uniforms and cops parked outside bars at 2 a.m. It’s about Nor’easters and duck boats and Donzi’s. It’s about beach plum jelly and saltwater taffy. It’s about the Trade Winds, Kelly’s and Joey Harrison’s. It’s about Tuckerton, Bay Head, Sea Bright and Sandy Hook. Sometimes, it’s also about guidos. (The real term may be quidos, origin unknown, as in the WBQP – Welcome Back Quidos Party – which used to be an annual Memorial Day affair in Belmar.)
Snooki was born in Chile, so she can’t even be a guido. And as far as “Jersey Shore” being about the Jersey Shore, its second season took place in Miami and the upcoming season is planned for Italy.
Of course, I don’t really hate Snooki. I fear she’ll suffer a predictable fall from grace as soon as her 15 minutes of fame ends. Her 30K an episode could go a long way toward feeding hungry people in Lakewood or Asbury. But, of course, the world doesn’t work that way, even at The Shore.
It makes me mad that the name of one of my favorite places on Earth will now always be associated with a crappy TV show. But I can’t completely blame Snooki.
She’s just another bennie
