The armpit of America. Chris Christie and traffic problems. The Mafia. The Turnpike. There's no shortage of subjects when it comes to cracking jokes about New Jersey, and Michael Aaron Rockland, professor and chair of the Department of American Studies at Rutgers University knows them all.
In honor of "Be Nice to New Jersey Week," which ran from July 6 to 12, and thanks to funding from the Horizons Speakers Bureau of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, Rockland has been taking his in-depth presentation on the history of the "Jersey Joke" to audiences throughout the state.
Rockland, a New Jersey historian and author, gave the South Jersey Times a rundown on the long, complicated history of New Jersey as a punchline, from the planting of the seeds of the Philadelphia-New York rivalry in the 17th century to the Bridgegate scandal and everything in-between.
Early identity crisis
Making fun of New Jersey isn't new, Rockland said. In fact, it's literally older than the state itself.
When it was still controlled by the British Crown, the area between the Hudson and Delaware River was promised to two different parties, and after much dispute, eventually ending up in the control of Sir George Carteret, who governed the Isle of Jersey, and Lord Berkley, the Duke of York.
"The very origin of the Jersey Joke was who had New Jersey, and what was New Jersey," Rockland said.
Carteret and Berkley — now remembered by the municipalities that carry their names — split the state into East Jersey and West Jersey, drawing a diagonal line across the state, really separating the southeast part of the state from the northwest. Essentially, he said, it's a line that still remains and is the start of the cultural divide between North and South Jersey.
"Right from the beginning, the Jersey Joke had to do with the fact that New Jersey had this identity crisis. [West Jersey and East Jersey] were controlled from Philadelphia and New York, respectively," Rockland said. "And as we know, we've had a problem ever since."
Bruce Springsteen is shown during a concert at The Spectrum held in the 1980s.
Saved by Springsteen
For much of the following years and into the 20th century, New Jersey was plagued by perceptions drawn from travelers using the state as a throughway, Rockland said.
"They were seeing New Jersey as just a conduit to get from New York to Philadelphia. Add to that the Turnpike in the northern part is built through probably the ugliest part of New Jersey, it doesn't help us," said Rockland, noting even the maligned odors attributed to the state came from pig farms that were prolific in Secaucus years ago, but are now defunct.
To add insult to the injuries fueled by the Turnpike, the state became a frequent punchline in Woody Allen movies and on Saturday Night Live, particularly by Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna character. To Manhattanites, he said, New Jersey was the start of the middle of America, a cultural wasteland that had no real value to them.
"You never had a Saturday Night Live without a New Jersey put-down," Rockland said.
That is, until a young singer-songwriter from Freehold rocked Asbury Park and landed himself on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week.
"In 1975, suddenly people began to look at New Jersey differently," said Rockland. "[Hatred of New Jersey] began to really fall apart when Bruce Springsteen became this immense cultural hero."
Follow that up with the television phenomenon that was The Sopranos, and New Jersey finally became "cool."
In fact, instead of defending the state from the damage done by the Turnpike, Rockland was recently approached by journalists from the BBC who wanted to travel the length of it with him and learn more about the state.
"They wanted to talk about three things — the Turnpike, Springsteen and the Sopranos," said Rockland.
He didn't understand why exactly they were so enthralled with specifically those three topics, so he asked the reporter traveling with them. He said he "loved New Jersey," but had never been.
"I said 'How did you know you love New Jersey if you've never come here?' and he said 'New Jersey is cool. New Jersey is in, and everybody in London loves New Jersey,'" said Rockland, who visited London not long afterward and saw the splash the hit musical Jersey Boys made across the pond.
"It blew my mind," Rockland said.
Recovering from controversy, and Snooki
Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi appears at a signing event for her book "Baby Bumps" at Barnes & Noble in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
The prominence of Gov. Chris Christie and his frequent inclusion in late-night talk show and Saturday Night Live jokes didn't damage the state's recovered reputation like you might think, Rockland said.
The same thing that drew people to Springsteen — honest, representations of the state with no sugar coating in sight — is what made Christie such a national figure, he said.
"There's an honesty there, and I think in the Sopranos similarly," Rockland said. "A lot of it has to do with, this guy was in-your-face and take-no-prisoners, with more chutzpah than anybody else."
He is concerned that recent scandals enveloping Christie's administration — particularly the Bridgegate scandal that Rockland, who literally wrote the book on the George Washington Bridge, said will likely result in someone facing felony charges — may impact the state's image, and not in a good way.
"I think that may darken New Jersey's reputation, and perhaps it already has begun some sort of a revival of the Jersey joke that New Jersey is the crooked-ist state of the country," Rockland said, adding the Jersey Shore reality series didn't exactly help paint a pretty picture of the state.
Still, he said, Jersey has a lot going for it.
In addition to natural beauty lurking in just about every corner of the Garden State — "[Parts of Hunterdon County] looks more like Vermont than Vermont does," he said — it's becoming an attractive option for young people who can't afford the small fortune landlords charge for renting even the tiniest Manhattan apartments.
Rockland recalled a recent New Yorker cartoon that depicted a young family overwhelmed at Manhattan's real estate options, or lack thereof, with the husband looking longingly toward the Holland Tunnel.
"It was a really surprising cartoon, it was in effect a celebration of New Jersey at the expense of Manhattan," he said. "I know people who have moved to New Jersey and said 'Why didn't I do this a long time ago?'"
Contact staff writer Michelle Caffrey at 856-686-3686 or mcaffrey@southjerseymedia.com