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"Much like Lynn Hirschberg's brutal May profile of M.I.A., Horyn's [profile of reality TV star Snooki] neatly encapsulates everything most despicable about the Times and its cultural coverage — its snotty, keep 'em at arm's length, can you believe these people? attitude, the way you can practically feel the reporter holding her nose while she writes."
-Um. People are actually somehow boarding the Leave Snooki Alloooone!11!!! bandwagon. I think they'll be disappointed when they discover where it lets them off.
"Fight the real enemy."
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I just pray Snooki winds up tearing a photo of Chris Christie.
If I had to watch either Snooki or any of the idiots from "The Hills" I would pick Snooki 8 billion times out of 8 billion. Then again, I'd watch "Man versus Food" before I watched "The Jersey Shore".
No pickle photo?
That Mary Elizabeth Williams is quite a piece of work, huh?! I'm REAL REAL REAL pro-Snooki, but I don't think insulting the entire Ivy League alumna population is necessary to mounting a defense of La Snooks.
Not necessary, no, but once you're committing to writing An Encomium of Snooki, you might as well go balls to the wall.
I read both the Styles piece and the Salon response, and while I have only been able to watch half a single episode of Jersey Shore (yes, it was so bad I left the room), I find it a lot easier to sympathize with the pro-Snooki crowd. Because despite the headline, the Salon writer doesn't actually praise Snooki so much as call out the Styles writer for a writing voice that aims for "elitist bitch" and then overshoots.
I mean, this girl is paid to make a spectacle of herself as a parody of her own culture. Jersey Shore is minstrelsy, pure and simple. There's a story worth telling in the way this poor, stupid, annoying "guidette" (God please strike that word from my brain) is being exploited.
Instead, we get "POOR ITALIANS ARE TRASHY LAWL!!1" I must have missed the bit where that's less nauseating than Jersey Shore itself.
Normally I'da cringed a bit but I've seen that show.
Oh jeez. Both pieces are pretty weak, in their different ways, but Williams is reaching like crazy. The paragraph that begins "There's a Snooki in all of us regardless — we little working-class girls with big mouths, we bridge-and-tunnel types…" is way worse than anything in the NYT profile — more misconceived and miscalculated in its tone and, in its way, just as condescending. Trying to turn this defective little fame-monster from mid-state New York into some Springsteen-ian totem is pretty frankly ridiculous, and I say this as someone who has written a lot of over-the-top prose about NJ in my life.
You have a fair point – casting Snooki as everyman is ill-advised at best. But Williams is right that Horyn's profile reeks of the same "LOL STUPID POORS" classism as Jersey Shore itself.
@DD: Williams gives us her own version of classism though, no? You ever see Pretty in Pink? "If I hate him because he's got money, that's the same thing as them hating us because we don't."
It would have been really easy for Williams to come back with a "FUCKING RICH ASSHOLES" tirade, it's true, but the closest she comes is with the line, "working-class girls … the Williamsburg hipsters and the Ivy League princesses sneer at." I think that restraint is pretty admirable.
It's certainly a far cry from "trying to hold a conversation with Snooki is a little like getting down on your hands and knees with a child. You have to come down to her level, and sometimes you almost think you need to bribe her with a piece of candy to coax her to be more responsive."
Now I feel sorry for turnips.
The Horyn profile perfectly encapsulates the classist attitudes that characterize the coverage of the show.
What I have never understood about cultural elitism is how so few realize that NJ receives the least federal funding for its educational system out of the entire country. NJ lacks the resources to develop, open and finance more community colleges. That means there is little class mobility in Jersey.
Their lower-middle class populace dwells in the middle-ring suburbs where they are brainwashed into spending their money on petty cash pleasures and seaside vacations.
This show attempts to justify the hatred of the lower-classes by making their ignorance drama. It also perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Italian culture. Lastly, few viewers actually realize that the participants aren't even from Jersey; they're from the Island or upstate NY.
I hope that large social problems are no longer condensed into reality soap operas. Seeing ignorance as entertainment dehumanizes the most exploited classes in America.
umm.. what are you talking about? Is this the same New Jersey that has one of the best public school systems in the country (4th best high schools, for example) and has one of the most college educated populations (6th I think? just scanned quickly). So… um, I think this is what Choire is talking about. You're defending the wrong people.
@venetianblinds: Isn't it also kind of elitist to assume that the reason to want to spend one's money on seaside vacations is "brainwashing"?
This comment on the Salon piece made me "laugh out loud" man I wish there was an acronym, that's a lot to type:
Sorry, I meant "Snooki".
I like Sookie. She's trash I can sink my teeth into.
-Michael D. Zungolo
This is the woman who hated J.C. Penney, right? I get all my Styles Fag Hags mixed up.
That's Cintra Wilson, who has been TOTALLY MISSING and I am DYING for a FIX.
No…this is the woman who wrote about fashion but never wore high fashion because she had a regular sized body, then stopped eating carbs, became a size zero and was all "hey everybody, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels".
@Tuna: She has clearly never tasted arancini.
NY Mag has hired her to do the little song and dance there, non? Or was the Forever 21 thing a one-off?
I'm still mad that she's not doing Critical Shopper any more. I don't know about the status of her NYMag pieces.
"Senator John McCain Twittered her." I'll never get used to this. It sounds like a scene from the dirtier kind of Harlequin romance.
Senatorial intervention is just one of the many reasons she is the new Teri Schiavo.
I know where the bandwagon lets off – the bar.
Whaddaya think I'm stoopid?
I'm no Snooki booster, but it really is a shockingly condescending article. Does the NYT know that they can actually turn publicists down if they don't want to do a profile?
Hey, at least I learned something from the NYT piece:
Snooki isn't even Italian. She's Chilean, and adopted.
Just wait until she's revealed to be the lost daughter of Pinochet.
"Chilean" is not an ethnicity. Lots of Chileans are Italian. Not saying she is but you never know. Personally I see a lot of Mapuche there.
I just wanted to say that Snooks had me at the duck phone. That is all.
i "<3" snooki. she is a sparkplug.