another step away

I’ve always had this theory a little bit, it’s not so simple, but part of the reason New Jersey has got picked on partially has to do with race. Maybe it’s a controversial theory, but it’s like, the average person, when they’re making fun of New Jersey and they put on a voice – and I thought this long before Jersey Shore – the voice they do, it tends to be a working class Italian accent. It’s worth thinking about, where did these ideas come from? Like, why would New Jersey get picked on more? There’s the factories and pollution, but there’s also this idea of the Jersey girl. It’s basically that classic thing, a lower middle class white person, especially one who might be Italian or Jewish or Irish, from that wave of immigration, there’s something that’s sort of un-classy about it. As years go on, people internalize that stuff and it ceases to signify in an obvious way, but then when you work backwards, you think “where does all this stuff come from?,” this idea of the bumbling dumb ass from New Jersey, who are you talking about? Oh, you’re talking about what you perceive to be a dumb ass working class white person. And when you think about it that way it ceases to be all that funny.