Abstract
Let me begin with an anecdote. Long before the media spectacle of 2009–2010 surrounding MTV’s Jersey Shore, the police department of the small New Jersey shore town of South Belmar warily eyed the 2000 Labor Day weekend marking the last “fling” of the summer. An “internal police memo” identified a particular group for special scrutiny: “Let’s end the summer by taking a ‘bite’ out of the remaining ‘guidos’ and have some fun while we are doing it.” When news of the “memo,” written by a police corporal with an Irish surname, was leaked to an Italian American antidefamation organization, the latter lodged a formal protest with the town government. The town’s mayor, who had an Italian surname, maintained that the term “guido” did not refer to Italian Americans but to “people from the city,” undoubtedly preferring the insult to fall on a group that was too amorphous to field an antidefamation constituency. The maneuver failed to satisfy an official of the Italian American organization because “Everyone in the United States knows that ‘Guido’ is ‘an Italian slur.’” This, at least, was the definition of the situation that was registered on the organization’s website.1
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Notes
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© 2010 William J. Connell and Fred Gardaphé
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Tricarico, D. (2010). Narrating Guido. In: Connell, W.J., Gardaphé, F. (eds) Anti-Italianism. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115323_15
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