MTV has a great deal to answer for — reducing our attention span to
half-second jump cuts and paving the way for American Idol for starters — but the network still erroneously referred to as Music
Television might have finally trumped itself in sheer loathsomeness
with their latest foray into humanity’s dregs, The Jersey
Shore.
Essentially The Real World: Seaside Heights, the show
chronicles the dizzying highs and perma-tanned lows in the lives of a
group of (mostly) Italian-Americans spending the summer “down the
Shore.”
As with most MTV shows of its ilk, the program concerns itself
primarily with watching “JWoww,” “The Situation,” “DJ Pauly D,” and
the rest get drunk, fuck, get too drunk to fuck, and pose in a manner
most flattering to the omnipresent cameras.
Maybe it’s the regional/cultural gap between SE Texas and New Jersey,
but I admit: I had a hard time believing this shit was real. Like
everyone else, I’ve seen those Lee
Hotti pics, as well as the so-called anti-Guido demotivational
posters, but like most people I’d always assumed they were merely
representative of an extremely tiny minority, like Houston-based Bud
Adams fans or gay Republicans. Apparently I was wrong.
The show has also angered
some in the Italian-American community, including Joseph Del Raso,
the president of The National Italian-American Foundation, a state of
affairs that reminds me of nothing so much as that scene from The
Simpsons when the president of the “Italian-American Anti
Defamation League” tells a bunch of mob stereotypes they really “burn
his cannoli.”
I
won’t say that the fact the cast insists on self-identifying as
“guidos” should alleviate these feelings, but…okay, yes it should.
Anyone who believes the majority of Italians in this country spend two
hours a day shredding their abs or pack suitcases full of hair gel is
doing time in a CIA prison where the only TV available is this and
Real Housewives of New Jersey. They’re no more representative
of Italians than Lucky the Leprechaun is of the Irish, or Tiger Woods
is of…Cablinasians.
What’s inescapable in all this is how MTV continues to get away with
committing entertainment-related crimes against humanity. I’m not
talking about using footage of Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi getting belted
in the mouth by a male New York gym teacher to promote this week’s
episode — lack of taste has never stopped MTV before — but rather
that the network has once again loosed a tide of repugnant humanity
upon the earth.
Time will tell where they’ll rank in terms of overall MTV
loathsomeness, and the lifespan of similar celebrity nonentities is
thankfully as abbreviated as the shelf life of an Animotion video.
That said, my brief exposure to the Jersey crew fills me with
confidence that we’ll be speaking their names in the same nauseous yet
reverent tones usually reserved for Puck, Jesse Camp, Dan Cortese, and
*shudder* Kennedy.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to
Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” about 50 times.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.
