Just when you thought it was safe to return to the beach, it’s time to put on your skintight jeans and gel your hair into submission.
The foul-mouthed, drunken bimbos, buffoons and gangsta wannabes who embarrassed New Jersey and disgraced America, while turning every Italian outside of Milan into foul-mouthed nymphomaniacs, are back in action.
This time, the stage isn’t the Jersey Shore. It’s New York. Brooklyn, to be exact — an ethnically diverse and increasingly prosperous borough where, in 2012, one can easily find a college-educated human who is not a priest. Gang warfare and fresh mozzarella have grown as rare as loud Sunday-night dinners with the grandparents.
But don’t tell that to the producers of “Brooklyn 11223” — a reality show set to stink up our shores next month on the Oxygen network. With its caricatures of slutty “guidos” totally lacking in manners and sexual restraint, who bear the absence of a vocabulary beyond “fuhgeddaboudit!” the show cements the basest bigotry. For Italians today may represent the last group that TV producers are permitted to malign. It’s also fun and profitable.
The show is modeled on the John Travolta movie “Saturday Night Fever” — which came out 35 years ago. It was revealed in the 1990s that the film’s dumb, sexed-up characters, introduced in a groundbreaking article in New York magazine, were totally fabricated by the author, Brit Nik Cohn.
So now we’ve got a reality show based on one of history’s greatest journalistic frauds.
The show centers around skanky gals Joey Lynn Tekulve (left in photo), 24, and Christie Maria Livoti (right), 23. (Note the vowels.) Though they’re adults, the ladies live to harbor a beef that goes back years, when Joey is believed to have seduced Christie’s boyfriend.
“If somebody does wrong to one of us, it’s like doing it to all of us,” Christie says, Mafia-style, in what may be New York’s last remaining Brooklyn accent. Doesn’t anyone have a job around here? Well, one girl is a bartender.
“Brooklyn 11223” purports that Bay Ridge (which lies in another ZIP code) is a small hamlet divided into rival girl gangs, torn by betrayal, skimpy clothes and lack of familiarity with feminism. As a nod to real reality, a token character is a Muslim-American who hides her libertine lifestyle from her family.
“Here we go again!” moaned Andre DiMino, national president of the Jersey-based Italian-American One Voice Coalition. While he thinks “The Godfather” is a great work of fiction, DiMino says viewers believe what they see on reality TV.
“Andrea, I travel around the country, and unfortunately, perception is reality.” said DiMino, whose parents hail from Sicily. “I’m an engineer, designing medical electronics. After a conference with medical doctors, one of them wanted to know if I was connected and carrying a gun.
“The last two Medal of Honor winners were Italian-American!” he said. “We are being marginalized and tainted by these boors, bimbos and buffoons on TV. With Italian-Americans, it’s totally pervasive. It’s totally acceptable.”
Not only does the show trash Italians, it maims my borough.
Bay Ridge and surrounding communities featured in the show bear little resemblance to what’s portrayed. In 1989, African-American Yusuf Hawkins was killed by a mob of whites after straying into nearby Bensonhurst. In two decades, the racial makeup has changed dramatically in this part of the world, along with the mood.
Asians, Russians, Hispanics and African-Americans are moving into Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge in large numbers. A friend who lives there recently rented an apartment to the kind of mixed-race hipsters you’d expect to see in Williamsburg.
“On my block, we have maybe six or seven houses sold in 18 months, all to Asians,” said Josephine Beckmann, district manager of Bay Ridge-based Community Board 10. While the area was more than 84 percent white in 1990, the proportion dropped to 61.5 percent by 2010. Even fewer residents under 18 are white, 51.7 percent.
And guess what. People actually like each other.
“It would be upsetting,” said Beckmann, “to see this great mixture of ethnicities, all living together in peace,” reduced to ugly stereotypes.
Let’s hope “Brooklyn 11223’’ sinks like a rock.
Hateful anti-Israel boycott is typical Park Slop
Yet another reason to avoid the People’s Republic of Park Slope: Members of the vaunted Park Slope Food Coop, where phony hipsters and lazy celebrities hire servants to work their monthly shifts, are working to ban Israeli-made products from the store’s plastic-free shelves.
Supporters of the action say Israel oppresses Palestinians, but they ignore atrocities committed against Israelis. The boycott of Holy Land staples, from seltzer to paprika to hummus, is more than a protest. It smacks of blatant anti-Semitism.
In what’s expected to be a massive March 27 meeting, coop members get to weigh in on whether the matter should come up for a vote. My head hurts. Suffice it to say, I won’t be joining the co-op. Who needs Park Slope?
No Prince Charming
Monaco’s Prince Pierre Casiraghi’s got some ’splainin’ to do.
The 24-year-old grandson of Grace Kelly, who appears to weigh 135 pounds soaking wet, and his posse of entitled slackers got into a limp-wristed brawl in a Meatpacking District night spot. Witnesses said the soft-palmed crew goaded the much-larger Adam Hock as he sat at a prime table at 2:20 a.m. Saturday. The boys were said to have heckled Hock’s supermodel guests while sucking from his inflated $500 bottles of vodka.
Casiraghi and three useless pals, including former Paris Hilton flame Stavros Niarchos, were allegedly punched out, singlehandedly, by Hock, a former club owner who smashed Casiraghi’s face. Guess who came to the little prince’s rescue.
A group of even skinnier models broke up the fight!
Hock was charged with four counts of assault. Royal mom Princess Caroline is said to be appalled by the international sissy fight.
I need to get out more.
A real NJ hero dies
Just 20 years old, Marine Lance Cpl. Osbrany Montes De Oca was killed fighting for his country in Afghanistan. As he was laid to rest near his home in New Jersey this week, Gov. Chris Christie ordered flags flown at half-staff for De Oca, as he did for singer Whitney Houston, who died in a bathtub after years of excess.
De Oca’s funeral was not attended by Kevin Costner, nor did Alicia Keys sing. He was mourned by friends and family who lost a brave young man, too soon. He should not be forgotten.
Gender benders
For some youngsters, changing one’s body is the new black. A growing number of mixed-up kids are undergoing sex-change operations, with the blessing of parents and medical professionals. They include an 8-year-old Los Angeles girl whose folks are waiting anxiously until she enters puberty before making her a he.
Whatever happened to playing dress-up?