Snooki Forever

At right is 2009 MTV poster for "Jersey Shore," a popular reality show.  I never watched it, but, as a New Jersey resident, I heard more than I wanted to know about its gang of foul-mouthed and hard-drinking 20-somethings.

The show ended after six seasons and three years, and most people in New Jersey were pretty pleased to see it go away.

But it didn't go away.  The Seaside Heights house where Jersey Short was set can be rented for the bargain price of $1,200 a night.  It also is available for sweet 16 parties and other cool events.

And then there is another lingering remnant:  Snooki.

Snooki (Nicole Polizzi) was the most popular character on the "Jersey Shore."  At its height, she was paid $150,000 an episode.

Now we seem to be stuck with her.  Every few months another Snooki story find its way into our newspapers.

Yesterday we read that Snooki's lawyers won a court case against a company that marketed a knockoff of her perfume.

Yes, Snooki has her own perfume.  It is not expensive and can be found at Walmart, Kmart, Sears and Amazon.  People seem to like it.  One reviewer said, "From the cute packaging and the fact that I love Snooki, this is great perfume."

Snooki also has her own line of Snooki self-tanning products.

Before and After

Other Snooki news:

Snooki lost 50 pounds after having her first baby, and no, I'm not going to post a picture.

 Oh, what the hell.  It's on the right here.

Snooki earned $200,000 for appearing "Dancing with the Stars."

Snooki made the rounds of TV's major talk shows.

Snooki has an opinion about New Jersey governor Chris Christie.  If Donald Trump had run for president in 2012, she would have voted for him.

Snooki, pregnant with her second child, is planning a wedding.

Snooki was paid $32,000 by Rutgers University to sit on a stage and answer questions from a student  audience.  (The school claimed the money didn't come from student tuition but rather from a vending contract with Pepsi.  A funny thing about money, though:  It's fungible.)

Snooki and someone named Jwoww (also pregnant and with her own line of perfume and tanning products) are in the fourth season of another classy MTV program named, appropriately enough, "Snooki and Jwoww." Or JWOWW.  It gets reported either way.

I think New Jersey has had enough of Snooki.  Why couldn't MTV have set this new show in some other lucky state?

Who Said That, Part 3

I had planned to cap this piece with a quote from H.L. Mencken, but when I went online to make sure I got it right, I found there were several different versions.

According to brainyquote.com, Mencken wrote this:

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

thinkexist.com has it this way:

"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of 

the great masses of the plain people."

Here's how thisdayinquotes.com put it:

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Finally, I found two citations that agreed with each other -- from goodreads.com and britannica.com:

"No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have searched the record for years, 

and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating 

the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

Unfortunately, H. L. Mencken died 58 years ago, and so we can't consult him personally about the quote.  My guess is the last version above is the correct one.

He was an irascible and skeptical newsman, most associated with the Baltimore Sun, and right on serious issues including the Scopes trial and the treatment of Jews in Germany in the 1930s.  People still read him and hold Mencken conferences, and there are annual meetings at his gravesite.

Something tells me that nobody will be talking about Snooki 58 years from now.