Eurotrash Italophile snobs aghast over Season 4 of the MTV reality show Jersey Shore being set inside the pristine borders of teetotaling, sunscreen-loving, sexually Puritanical Italia need to get off their high horses.

Back when Season 1 aired, some reviewers of the show were appalled at the Italian-American stereotypes the Jersey clan supposedly perpetuated, including being muscular and energetic dancers (the guys), fashionable and flirty (the girls), and close-knit and family-oriented (the guys and girls).  Heaven forfend everyday folks should associate such ghastly traits with Italian Americans.

That paragon of fine Italian cuisine, Domino’s Pizza, huffily yanked its advertising from the show over feared repercussions from its silver-palated customers.

Season 4 of Jersey Shore, which premiers tomorrow night, was set in Italy, because the cast members are Italian American and the show’s producers thought it would be fun to send them abroad to learn a bit of Italian and explore their roots.

Last week, The New York Times wailed that during their stay cast members had caused Florence residents “to despair that their elegant city had irrevocably become a party town,” and compared the housemates to the “hordes of drunken American junior-year-abroad students [who] have helped transform Florence into the backdrop of a 24/7 movida, or pub crawl.”

The Times admitted that during filming, Italy was caught up in the sex scandals of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was charged with “dalliances with under-age women and hosting wild parties at his villas… in a real spectacle far more grotesque than anything to spring forth from MTV’s almost quaint cultural imagination.”  So it appears that guidos and guidettes don’t have a monopoly on bad behavior, and that libido doesn’t slow down for everyone over 30.  read more »