THE JERSEY SHUFFLE: I think it's safe to say that Bruce Springsteen is the best thing about New Jersey, and I feel blessed to have experienced the Boss performing right at home, "somewhere in the swamps of Jersey." But I've noticed quite a few odd happenings in the Garden State in recent days and weeks. To whit:
- Rutgers University in New Brunswick is gearing up for the annual conference this fall of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, a national student group that refuses to recognize Israel's existence and "has not taken a position" on whether they approve of suicide bombings. The group also erroneously refers to Israel's form of government as "apartheid," even though Arabs in fact enjoy considerably more legal and democratic rights in Israel than they do in any Arab country.
My friends in Rutgers law school are on the case. I'm not sure if I'm with them in pushing for the cancellation of the conference, but I certainly do believe that not a penny of taxpayer money should go towards helping those idiots.
-The mayor of Hopewell, the South Jersey hometown of my roommate, last week appointed Marc Moran to the city council- apparenty unaware that Moran has ties to a national white supremecist group. Moran has since resigned.
- Like trucker hats, metrosexuals, and "Cameltoe" before it, a national newspaper article has somehow turned the whole NJGuido thing from a minor curiosity into a major, nationally felt phenomenon.
- It was reported last week that Blair Hornstine, the South Jersey brainiac who sued when her high school only made her co-valedictorian, has been dropped from Harvard's class of 2007, as a result of allegations that she plagiarized parts of a local newspaper column.
Over the months of this case Hornstine became perhaps America's most reviled teenager- acquiring the nickname "Whiny McTired" (the verb "Hornstining") from Jeremy Wahlman, and having her misdeeds catalogued in the Weekly Standard.
The Hornstine-out-of-Harvard story was broken in the Harvard Crimson, bringing up the natural question- the Harvard Crimson publishes in the summer?
- In Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken at around 8 this morning, a 20-something white guy walked in wearing a visor, which has apparently supplanted the trucker hat as the latest must-have hipster hatwear. This piqued the interest of an 80-something Italian guy sitting at table nearby, who asked where the hat came from. The guy told him the name of the store, inspiring a knowing retort from the senior citizen:
"It makes you look like an old fucking guinea."