Jersey Shore: Yo, Is It Offensive?

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MTV’s hit reality show Jersey Shore is becoming as well-known for its brawls as its Guido accents and big hair. In addition to the infamous Snooki bar fight, the show has sparked a tussle between the show’s producers and Italian-American groups who claim it perpetuates offensive stereotypes (like the use of the word Guido).

While some advertisers have pulled their ads in retaliation, cries of bias have largely been brushed aside…and at face value, it does seem silly. The loud-mouthed, spray-haired, skin-baring Jersey stereotype has endured in everything from Marisa Tomei’s Oscar-winning My Cousin Vinny performance to YouTube parodies like the 25-million-hits-and-counting “My New Haircut” (warning: it’s R-rated). Why put up a fuss now? Plus, caricatures are the stuff reality TV is made of: Just ask the bimbo sexual opportunists of The Girls Next Door, spoiled rich kids of The Hills, or anyone who’s ever been featured on Wife Swap.

But the “Jersey Guido” typecast is more deeply rooted in ethnicity and class than the typical reality TV circus, which makes the viewers’ sense of superiority a little harder to stomach. It’s telling that Italian-Americans are ticked about the portrayal, not the state of New Jersey. And the group tends to be lower-income and not highly educated. It’s hard to imagine other reality TV shows based on that brand of bias—like, say, Harlem Ghetto or Mexican Immigrants of LA—getting a similar free pass from the PC Police.

Let’s be real: The reason people love Jersey Shore is because it allows them to watch the brashness, cat fights, cleavage, and muscle tees, and think How ridiculous! Thank god I’m not like/better than that! Without the stereotypes, where would the fun come from?

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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