Dad Man Talking - MTV's Jersey Shore

MTV’s ‘Jersey Shore’ or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Guidos 

All Italians are gangsters; all Jews are good at making money; all young inner-city African-American men are drug dealers; and all Asians are smart and sneaky. All Hispanics have too many children; all blonds are dumb; all midgets have big penises; and homosexuals are all bitchy and love show tunes. Stereotypes are helpful, don’t you think? These pigeonholes allow us to face the truth about ourselves and each other - and the truth is that we’re still just primitive cave dwellers who are not only ignorant about other races, religions and creeds but are even more ignorant about the tribes to which we ourselves belong.

This is why I’m getting a lot of entertainment value out of the MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” – not so much from the group of 20-something, gold chain wearing Italian American kids who are using too much hair gel, beating each other senseless and sleeping with each other’s boyfriends, but from the Italian American Anti-Defamation League, UNICO and other organized Italian Americans protesting to save society from this mish mash of hormones and cultural failings.

Speaking as a full blooded, first-generation Italian American, I can authentically tell you that we Italians have never been very good at seeing the truth about ourselves. We get mouthy and obnoxious about our dignity and ethnic pride, and while we are blathering on, carrying signs and having parades honoring our heritage, there always seems to be a group of Italian guys in the background wearing sleeveless t-shirts and slapping their girlfriends to the tune of “That’s Amore.” Yes, we Italians do have a long, lineage of men and women who have contributed mightily to society (just like every other ethnic and religious group on God’s earth), but we also have the MTV Jersey Shore “Guidos” out there acting like young gangsters in love (just like you might have a segment of your own ethnic group that makes you a little less than proud).

And whenever we think we have the lid down on these self-titled Guidos, they just pop up again to show us all how human and prone to stereotypes we are. It’s impossible to hide this behind censorship, or cancelled TV shows or parades or ethnic pride, so we really need to somehow learn to embrace it. After all, everyone has to start somewhere – even the Guidos need to be given the chance to evolve - and if we can face who we are, admit it to others and learn to fix the problems (not just the symptoms), then we might not have to worry so much about stereotypes.

I learned early on how important this is. And I learned it the hard way. We all did.

It was June 28, 1971 and I was a fat 15 year old riding with my father and uncle in a chartered bus filled with actual mobsters and a gaggle of other men who someday hoped they would be. We were on our way to Columbus Circle in New York City to rally for the first ever Italian American day. This might be a colorful image to you, but it’s important to note right here that Italian American day had been organized by Joe Colombo - a mobster who had done more than his share to give Italian Americans a bad name – and it was Joe’s stroke of genius to organize this day to protest the FBI’s harassment of Italian Americans and undo the image of Italians as gangsters. It seems to me that Joe was just asking for trouble.

And trouble is, of course, what Joe Colombo – Mr. Italian American Day – would get. No sooner had our merry band of murderers, thieves and wannabes arrived at the corner of 8th Avenue and 56th Street, no sooner had the ‘Little Tonys’ and ‘Joey Jockey Shorts' and ‘Mickey Eyeballs’ disembarked from our motor coach and lumbered up the avenue to join the crowd of 4000 at the edge of Columbus Circle, than did we learn that we had all been played for a bunch of suckers. Approaching the multitude, we could see that the horde of happy paisans that had come to celebrate their honesty and work ethic were either ducking for cover, looking for weapons or running for their lives. My father and uncle picked me up by my arms and ran with me back in the direction of Times Square, knocking over anyone who got in the way. I didn’t know what was happening to me. But I’ll bet that Joe Colombo knew what was happening to him. Joe had just been shot behind the Columbus Circle stage and right after that Joe’s bodyguards had shot the guy who shot Joe. It turns out that Italian American day was stereotypical business as usual for the mob, no matter what Joe wanted us to believe.

Having had this experience firsthand, I see the Guidos on MTV as not very threatening at all to Italian Americans. Stereotypes exist because we are all human and all humans do stupid, unforgivable things. We do kill each other, we do cheat each other, we are all at times dumb and some of us do have more children then we can afford, we are sometimes sneaky and too smart for our own good and evil does lurks at the edges of all our hearts. Taking this behavior off TV won’t make it stop or cease to spread the stereotypes, no more than having a day devoted to Italian Americans will make mobsters stop killing each other.

So I choose to laugh at stereotypes of Italians. What else can a sane man do? I try to teach this to my children as well. Have a sense of humor, I say. Then after we’re done laughing, we can get down to the business of what we can do to make a better world.

On Christmas Eve about ten years ago we gave our kids a guinea pig. My brother was over the house along with a good friend of mine who is Jewish (but who we all know really wants to be Italian). We named this little guinea pig 'Rudy' after Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and, once my kids had him out of the cage and were playing with him on the floor, my brother, my friend and I took one look at this fat, fury little rodent, and we starting making ethnic slurs about him.

“Hey,” my brother said, “why do you think they call him a guinea pig? Is he Italian?” “I don’t know,” said my friend, “but we should get him a tiny sleeveless, wife-beater t-shirt and a couple of gold chains.” “No,” I said, “That would just be wrong. He may be a guinea, but if we dress him like that he might start organizing the rats and mice in the neighborhood and then they’d try to rub out all the cats.” At this point the kids had stopped playing with Rudy, whereupon this plump creature on the floor gazed up at my brother, my friend and I. We all knew what Rudy was thinking, so one of us – doing our best imitation of Sonny Corleone from 'The Godfather' - said what Rudy might have if he could talk. “Hey,” we heard Rudy bellow, “Who you calling a guinea?”

It just goes to show you. It’s not just a stereotype. All guinea pigs really do beat their wives and if you don’t treat them with respect they’re going to have you killed.