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Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi - Source: Reuters -
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Several days ago, police in Seaside Heights New Jersey took into custody a young woman who has come to define a generation... or something.
Nicole Polizzi, otherwise known as "Snooki" is 4 ft 9, loud, stout with alcohol overindulgence, and dumber than a bag of hammers. She is also one of the stars of The Jersey Shore, an MTV reality series that details the travails of being young, juiced up, vainglorious, and yet gloriously American.
She is such a celebrity that even her hairstyle - "the pouf" - has its own Facebook page. Can the same be said of your rug?
Details of Snooki's arrest are sketchy. Apparently she was lunching on Long Island Iced Teas. It's said she was wearing a T-shirt with the word SLUT emblazoned across it. She tried to get on a bicycle and fell off. She visited a sex shop, and brought a great deal of merchandise. All the while, the cameras were rolling. The dramatic apex of the afternoon was her screaming at officers, "You can't $%#@in' arrest me, I'm Snooki!"
They could, and they did. Later that day, her friend and ally on The Jersey Shore, Jwoww got her out of the slammer. Jwoww has a penchant for tequila slammers and catfights. Remember that friend you had when you were 19 who after three drinks was amusing, and after five was a liability? That friend was Jwoww on a slow day.
This is all fun to recall in a lofty way, but I'd like to suggest Snooki is significant of something. Young people in the US seem very poised nowadays. They're also a little dull. They are socially more conservative - so far as I can tell - but more inclined to the ersatz libertarianism that is a byproduct of watching their greedy Baby-Boomer parents beggar the societies that cosseted them, with the paradoxical demands of lower taxes and more entitlements. They value consensus. Coming out of college into the worst recession in generations, they are also less employed than their older siblings or cousins. They live at home into their 20s, with greater uncertainty.
But they also have Snooki. She is a simulacra of what it once was to be young - poorly behaved, craving attention, often in the vicinity of genuine trouble (CBS reports that she sold alcohol at a high school party from which one of the attendees drove home drunk and was killed). She, too, is dull, I suppose, but somehow traditional.
Look past the vulgarity. Snooki is descended from a long line of youthful ratbags that includes Paris Hilton, Baudelaire, Elvis Presley, Johnny Rotten, Oscar Wilde, and Lord Byron - precocious youngsters who, like the canary in the coalmine, let you know that something is happening.
The night before Snooki was banged up, the second series of The Jersey Shore was aired, attracting about 5 million viewers, a number that may seem like small beer until you consider that around two and a half times that number watched the series finale of Lost, a scripted, widely referenced and exponentially more expensive show.
I guarantee the ratings of this week's episode of The Jersey Shore will be even better than last week's. Snooki's wickedness allows America's young, who face mixed employment prospects with unreasonable expectations of success to get on with the desperate, grinding work, of being all grown up too soon, and not grown up enough.
Read more of Tim Wilson's articles .
