Sicilian Culture: The News: AP Tells Us What Everyone Thinks About "JOIZY"

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AP Tells Us What Everyone Thinks About "JOIZY"
By John P. McAlpin, The Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey is the subject of a thousand jokes about mobsters, turnpike exits, trash dumps and big-haired shore girls. You gotta problem with that?
Two-thirds of New Jersey people don't care what you think, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released Thursday.
``I couldn't care less too. I ain't going nowhere,'' said Acting Governor Donald T. DiFrancesco when told about the poll results.
Some 27 percent of New Jerseyans surveyed said the first thing that came to mind when they thought of their home state was that it's a nice place to live. Another 20 percent associated it with the shore.
``I've probably made a hundred trips to (Los Angeles), 50 to Chicago and 50 to Florida, but I always come back. When people ask where I'm from, I say 'Joizy,''' said Bob Reed, 52, of Mount Laurel.
But only 8 percent of respondents from out of state thought New Jersey would make a pleasant home. Sixteen percent couldn't think of anything to associate with the state, 7 percent thought of casinos and 10 percent thought of pollution and a bad smell.
Some 58 percent of residents outside New Jersey also believe the home of HBO's fictional mob family ``The Sopranos'' has the same or more mobsters and organized crime than any other state.
New Jersey residents admit the state has its problems.
More than half said New Jersey is more polluted than other states. And 75 percent said they think their taxes are the highest in the country.
Still, only 29 percent believed they had a worse problem with crooked politicians and organized crime than the rest of the United States.
``New Jersey people are very sensitive on that question. You have this thumping majority that insists it's about the same as in other states,'' said Peter Woolley, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson.
Fairleigh Dickinson surveyed 500 adults in New Jersey and 800 in other states in a random telephone poll between June 28 and July 9. The survey's margin of error for the New Jersey portion was plus or minus 5 percentage points; the national segment was 4 percentage points.
www.publicmind.fdu.edu

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