Some New Jersey politicians (well, OK, one assemblyman at least) are furious after learning that the first season of MTV's Jersey Shore, a paean to all things terrible about America's fourth-worst state, will cost the state's taxpayers $420,000 in tax credits. The horror!
An assemblyman named Declan O'Scanlon, a name he clearly made up when either bumblingly going undercover to infiltrate the IRA or to work more convincingly at a Bennigan's, is outraged that his state's hardworking taxpayers are forced to fork over $420,000 so these mooks, some of whom are not even from New Jersey!, can tan and drink and recite Wordsworth to each other or whatever they do on that show.
Of course the mayor of Seaside Heights, who is just a mozzarella stick wearing a fake mustache and a bowler hat, says that when the show brings in far more than $420,000 in tourism dollars, but screw that! The whole idea that you have to spend money to make money is ridiculous and has never been proven true. That's why Governor Chris Christie got rid of the film tax credit program last year. Can't have local crews, caterers, and other such layabouts employed at the expense of 10ยข a taxpayer. No sir.
And yet still this Jersey Shore tax break exists and Sean O'Shillelagh is mad. Trenton makes, Jersey Shore takes. A goddamned disgrace