“Jersey Shore”

Not that the cast of “Jersey Shore” needed another reason to become the scourge of decent society. Apparently a bit player on the wildly popular and extremely controversial MTV reality show conjured up (at least in his mind) an explanation for his beat-down on a recent episode: the very black people who tried to prevent the fight. And trust us that Stephen Izzo didn’t use those words to describe the African American race.

Apparently Izzo and Ronnie, the show's star and the man who actually delivered the knockout blow to Izzo, got into a verbal and physical altercation at a bar on Jersey's shore. The profanity and beer flowed in equal quantities inside the club and eventually spilled out into the streets. The MTV security detail, consisting of black men, tried futilely to prevent fisticuffs when Ronnie administered a wicked punch that sent Izzo crashing to the pavement.

After TKO victim Izzo peeled himself off the sidewalk and reconnected the nerve endings in his battered head, he dashed to the nearest computer to fire up the airwaves to express his feelings. He unleashed a string of racially inflammatory phrases to describe being on the losing end of a fight with African Americans who manned the MTV security detail and who were only trying to squelch the drama.  

"lets get something straight,” Izzo begins. “What u didnt see is i never fought ronnie i was fighting...those N----- bouncers when that b---- ran over and snuck me..then got stomped out by those 3 n------ as he ran away,” Izzo wrote on his Facebook page.

Izzo uses other profane terms, including misspelling “mulian,” a derisive term Italian-Americans have used in the past to describe African Americans. The episode in question, nevertheless, clearly shows that Izzo was the aggressor with the main stars of “Jersey Shore” — that is, until Ronnie applied a skull-jarring haymaker that had Izzo kissing the pavement. But it was the black security detail who wound up being victimized by Izzo’s acid-tinged tongue.

Episodes like this fracas are part of the reason some groups, particularly Italian-American organizations, wanted “Jersey Shore” banished from the airwaves.

–terry shropshire