MTV refused to send out advance screeners for review. The show is not listed anywhere on its press site. And the man responsible for foisting the most hateful, anti-Italian-American show ever allowed on legitimate TV won’t get on the phone to defend it.
Is MTV ashamed of what they’ve put on the air? If not, they should be.
Yes, I’m talking about “Jersey Shore,” a show in which Italian-Americans are stereotyped (clearly at the urging of its producer) into degrading and debasing themselves — and, by extension, all Italian-Americans — and furthering the popular TV notion that Italian-Americans are gel-haired, thuggish, ignoramuses with fake tans, no manners, no diction, no taste, no education, no sexual discretion, no hairdressers (for sure), no real knowledge of Italian culture and no ambition beyond expanding steroid-and silicone-enhanced bodies into sizes best suited for floating over Macy’s on Thanksgiving.
Tony DiSanto, MTV’s Italian-American president of programming, who is responsible for this loathsome show, won’t talk to The Post. He did, however, talk to an enraged Italian-American group last week.
“The cast takes pride in their ethnicity,” he said. “In fact, it is a key driver of how they bond with each other and self-identify. They refer to themselves as ‘guidos’ in a positive manner.” What?
Since he won’t get on the phone with me, I will tell you publicly what I would have told him privately:
We Italian-Americans are not untrained house pets who exist for the amusement of others. Would that programming ever have been allowed if the group were African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jewish people? Right.
Let me tell you about the Italian-American group with whom I self-identify: My daughter is a cum laude graduate of Wellesley College, award-winning CEO of her own tech company and a blogger for the Huffington Post; my brother is a scientist and engineer; my cousin was the active-duty, career Army officer who brought all the troops into Ground Zero on 9/11.
We do not say “fuhgeddaboutdit” nor are we in waste management. We are, however, very much a typical Italian-American family with not a gel-haired thug for miles around.
What criteria did you use for casting this show? Did you deliberately search out Italian-Americans who were born without the gene for shame?
No wonder you won’t get on the phone. You must be — or should be — busy changing your last name to Smith.