Even those who lack a subscription to cable television can’t avoid the new MTV reality TV show, Jersey Shore. A bunch of hipster urbanites from well, mostly outside of New Jersey, get drunk and pump their fists. For these and other antics they have netted one of the largest rating share for a reality television show since Jon and Kate Disintegrate and some sweet paychecks. 10k an episode which works out to roughly 500 bucks a pump. Nice. They do almost as well as some of our hookers.

Like many others, I watched Snooki get cold cocked by a well-tanned and manicured fist on Youtube.  My friends of Italian descent complain of the stereotypes the show perpetuates frequently. In diners, long expositions from the under 25 set seated nearby about how stupid the show is, while simultaneously recounting their favorite episode scene by scene, abound. New Jersey magazine all but condemned the show in a recent issue. And I gotta say, what is the fuss about, exactly?

To be fair, I am not a Jersey boy by birth. My residence pedigree is rather mixed. I was born in the Midwest, and landed here on a near full-time basis in 1991, and went “pro” in 1995.  Only one Jersey Shore cast member has lived in the Garden State longer. And I truly have a love-hate relationship with this place, the sort of sentiment that can only come from being a long term transplant. Thus I feel like I know a little bit about this state.

New Jersey rests up on the visions of characters and caricatures. We have our local heroes, such as Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Thomas Edison, Kevin Smith and Kirstin Dunst. OK, Dunst, not so much. Our politics is the stuff of high satire, only it’s real.

Two administrations ago, as his wife and children looked on, our governor announced he was a gay American on national television. The last mayor of Newark is in Federal prison. When an organ trafficking operation needed someplace to locate, they chose the Garden State. Jimmy Hoffa might be resting beneath a concrete structure somewhere in our borders.  There are more than twenty school districts with neither schools, nor students. Don’t worry, these student-less districts do employ a small army of administrators and superintendents, which keeps them off the unemployment rolls. So we do our part for the economy.

But besides useless facts about the education system, I have learned from my nearly twenty years in this state one clear lesson: NJ exports what it wants to avoid dealing with. Corruption? We wrote the book on it. Runaway budget deficits? Us. Excruciating property taxes and prohibitively expensive car insurance rates? NJ leads the way. Jersey Shore is just the latest example of us spreading the pain. The thing is, most people would rather watch their own puppy drown than hit a club in Seaside ( the alleged Jersey Shore haunt ) during the summer.

And now, with any luck, it will be the last place the rest of America wants to go, too. But should you like the Jersey Shore, it’s all good, you’ll be getting a lot more of it than you ever imagined. Or probably wanted. So suck deeply the warm scent of over powering cologne and perfume. Follow the blinding sight of hair gel glistening in the sun. Crank up the dial on your tanning bed. Tease your hair like it’s 1983.  Hit the gym like a juice head. Do your laundry daily.

And know that each time viewership for Jersey Shore increases, you and your neighbors are becoming a little more Jersey.

And you will have been warned.