Jersey Shore on MTV 1

Jersey Shore's Bad Rap

There’s a reason why parents and grandparents remind younger generations not to, “air your dirty laundry in public”. The idiom is meant as a reminder that if you do not want your personal life to be the topic of gossip, it’s best to keep it private.

Perhaps this is advice that Mayor Ken Pringle of Belmar should have taken back in the summer of 2008 when he complained about the behavior of summer residents from Staten Island.

The MTV show Jersey Shore, which debuted in December of 2009, seems to have taken Mayor Pringle’s complaints as a road map for developing the new television series. The result has been another trough at which comedians and critics can feed for fodder to mock New Jersey.

It was July of 2008 when Mayor Pringle complained in his municipal blog about the problems Belmar experienced with unruly visitors. The Pringle newsletter described the party culture of all night drinking, and recounted one incident the newsletter describes where a Staten Island woman grabbed another woman by the hair punched her in the face with a bar glass. You can read the entire newsletter by clicking here. Mainstream news outlets got hold of the newsletter, and it was not long after that Mayor Pringle was issuing apologies left, right and center on his way over to Staten Island to break bread and broker a peace agreement

Flash forward to December 2009, and it appears producers at MTV were more entertained than outraged by the mayor’s descriptions of how Staten Island youth behave at the Jersey shore. The outrageous antics, the constant self-description of Guido, and the overall cloddish behavior of the reality show stars evoked another round of protests from the politically correct. Still fresh from having complained about the Real Housewives of New Jersey, many New Jerseyans are being joined by American-Italians and and Staten Islanders in protests over the show.

Unico, a national American-Italian organization based in New Jersey, publicly called for the shows cancellation before it even aired. The New Jersey Shore Convention & Visitors Bureau complained that the shows depiction of the Jersey shore would make it less appealing to people who might not fit the demographic of the shows reality stars. MTV bills the cast as the, “hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos”.

Below is a video trailer for the Jersey Shore premiere.