oracle
10-04-2002, 04:19 AM
He Should Thank Us (http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002381)
Torricelli's problem? He carries a torch for himself.
Peggy Noonan
Friday, October 4, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
New Jersey is hot as a pistol. "The Sopranos," Bruce Springsteen, Bob Torricelli, a state Supreme Court that expresses its latent creativity by taking a broad and even artistic approach to the law. New Jersey is front-page news.
You got a problem with that?
<center>---------------</center>
I happen to love New Jersey. It's not a hard place to love. I went to high school and college there, I lived there a few years ago, and there is something poignant and moving in it. Jerseyites all know they're part of a national punch line--"I'm from Jersey!"--and they accept it with grace and a shrug and play along with the joke if it'll make you happy. They are unpretentious.
And Jersey is colorful. It is not a beige state like Virginia, where everything--the hair color of the girls at the mall, the hills, the buildings of Tyson's Corner--comes in shades of brown. New Jersey has a broad palette; there's a full ethnic mix, and people have a shock of red hair and black hair and blue eyes and green eyes and freckles and round ebony faces. The grandchildren of the immigrants of Eastern and Western Europe are there, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of black Americans who came north in the 20th century are there, and so are new immigrants from all over the world.
It has the same ethnic mix as New York but less conceit. Instead of vanity it has an accommodating brassiness. The Jersey I like best is hard-hat, not high-hat, and working-class. In its old train stations and its black steel bridges--TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES--it looks like the America of "On the Waterfront," that masterpiece of estrangement, loyalty and love. My Jersey looks like America when America was young and tough.
Of course Jerseyites wince when you write things like this because it seems like you're reducing the state to clichés. And that's the politicians' job.
<center>---------------</center>
Forty years ago, in "The Making of the President, 1960," the big book that transformed modern political reporting, Theodore White called New Jersey the most corrupt big state in the union and said the reason was that it was the least covered by the media of the day. The great newspapers and the broadcasters with the most resources were in New York and Philadelphia. Jersey media couldn't hold on to first-rate writers and reporters; those who showed conspicuous talent were quickly lured to the big pay and big bylines of the big cities.
I first read White's observation when I was in high school. I thought to myself: By the time I'm grown up it will have changed. But it hasn't entirely.
Which has been both good and bad.
Good: Jersey longer than many states got to continue as itself, unruined by outsiders. It is still distinctive and still capable, at least to some degree, of producing kids with a bona fide regional accent.
Bad: Its rich tradition of corruption continues, if not largely unchecked then only slowly checked. Bob Torricelli would not, I think, have lasted quite so long in New York.
<center>---------------</center>
Others will castigate New Jersey's Supreme Court, political leadership and senior senator. But I want to castigate Bob Torricelli's withdrawal speech. It was really interesting and revealing. In fact I think it was a masterpiece of political manipulation that failed.
First, what worked.
...
Click here to read more (http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002381)
Torricelli's problem? He carries a torch for himself.
Peggy Noonan
Friday, October 4, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
New Jersey is hot as a pistol. "The Sopranos," Bruce Springsteen, Bob Torricelli, a state Supreme Court that expresses its latent creativity by taking a broad and even artistic approach to the law. New Jersey is front-page news.
You got a problem with that?
<center>---------------</center>
I happen to love New Jersey. It's not a hard place to love. I went to high school and college there, I lived there a few years ago, and there is something poignant and moving in it. Jerseyites all know they're part of a national punch line--"I'm from Jersey!"--and they accept it with grace and a shrug and play along with the joke if it'll make you happy. They are unpretentious.
And Jersey is colorful. It is not a beige state like Virginia, where everything--the hair color of the girls at the mall, the hills, the buildings of Tyson's Corner--comes in shades of brown. New Jersey has a broad palette; there's a full ethnic mix, and people have a shock of red hair and black hair and blue eyes and green eyes and freckles and round ebony faces. The grandchildren of the immigrants of Eastern and Western Europe are there, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of black Americans who came north in the 20th century are there, and so are new immigrants from all over the world.
It has the same ethnic mix as New York but less conceit. Instead of vanity it has an accommodating brassiness. The Jersey I like best is hard-hat, not high-hat, and working-class. In its old train stations and its black steel bridges--TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES--it looks like the America of "On the Waterfront," that masterpiece of estrangement, loyalty and love. My Jersey looks like America when America was young and tough.
Of course Jerseyites wince when you write things like this because it seems like you're reducing the state to clichés. And that's the politicians' job.
<center>---------------</center>
Forty years ago, in "The Making of the President, 1960," the big book that transformed modern political reporting, Theodore White called New Jersey the most corrupt big state in the union and said the reason was that it was the least covered by the media of the day. The great newspapers and the broadcasters with the most resources were in New York and Philadelphia. Jersey media couldn't hold on to first-rate writers and reporters; those who showed conspicuous talent were quickly lured to the big pay and big bylines of the big cities.
I first read White's observation when I was in high school. I thought to myself: By the time I'm grown up it will have changed. But it hasn't entirely.
Which has been both good and bad.
Good: Jersey longer than many states got to continue as itself, unruined by outsiders. It is still distinctive and still capable, at least to some degree, of producing kids with a bona fide regional accent.
Bad: Its rich tradition of corruption continues, if not largely unchecked then only slowly checked. Bob Torricelli would not, I think, have lasted quite so long in New York.
<center>---------------</center>
Others will castigate New Jersey's Supreme Court, political leadership and senior senator. But I want to castigate Bob Torricelli's withdrawal speech. It was really interesting and revealing. In fact I think it was a masterpiece of political manipulation that failed.
First, what worked.
...
Click here to read more (http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002381)