27 September 2011

No sense of humor, that guy

Rico says it's bad enough he's fat and ugly, but James Barron has the story in The New York Times of Chris Christie's war on Jersey Shore:
Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey blocked a $420,000 tax credit that the state’s Economic Development Authority had approved last week.
Was the loser a high-tech startup? An alternative energy company, perhaps?
No. It was Snooki and the Situation.
The production company behind the reality series Jersey Shore had applied for the credit, intended to expand film and television shooting in the state, to help cover costs for its inaugural season in 2009.
Christie said he was “duty-bound” to see that taxpayers were “not footing a $420,000 bill for a project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the state and its citizens. In this difficult fiscal climate,” he wrote to Caren S. Franzini, the chief executive of the Economic Development Authority, “the taxpayers of New Jersey should not be forced to subsidize projects such as Jersey Shore.”
Jersey Shore, shown on MTV, is hardly the only reality program to get economic help from the state in which it sets up its cameras. One show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, generated a small tempest on blogs by claiming $1.2 million in Alaskan tax credits under a plan that Palin had signed into law in 2008, when she was governor.
Christie told Franzini that he was not stopping other applications that had gotten the green light from the authority. Among them were tax credits totaling $9 million for a production company behind Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the long-running television drama about detectives on the New York side of the Hudson River, and $176,900 for three films.
Jeannie Kedas, a spokeswoman for MTV, said Christie’s veto of the credit “does not affect the show.”
State Senator Joseph F. Vitale, a Democrat from Middlesex County who had opposed the tax credit for Jersey Shore, applauded Christie’s action. “It’s about the words, and words matter,” Vitale, a Democrat from Middlesex County, said. “The words the cast members use to describe Italian-Americans, Guido and others, are no different to me than words used to disparage other ethnic groups or races. It wouldn’t be an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars to support that kind of language. That’s my beef with the show.” But it is not his only beef. “It’s just a bunch of deadwoods getting drunk and getting arrested,” he said. “I’m a big fan of turning the channel.”
Rico says he's never watched the show, so he really doesn't have an opinion, but 'a bunch of deadwoods getting drunk and getting arrested' doesn't sound appealing... (But is it just Rico, or does the Governor look like a guy from the Sopranos? And when is Guido an inappropriate word to use about such obvious Guidos?)

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