Now, I’ll start this off by saying I almost always introduce myself as being from Vermont. It’s where I went to high school and seems to always get more “oohs” and “ahhs” than saying you’re from New Jersey. Though I have a loyalty to both states, it’s a special bond that forms between a person and the state of New Jersey… one that is quite unexplainable by any outsider…

Read this speech by some random guy on the internet:

I’m from New Jersey. That’s right, New Jersey. The Armpit of America. The sewage capital of the world. New York’s retarded little brother. You can keep your pity, however, because I‘m here to defend it, mostly. Like many escaped New Jersey inmates, I have a unique variant of Stockholm syndrome when it comes to my home state. I’ve fallen in love with my captor.
Don’t get me wrong. New Jersey is a cesspool, just as you might have suspected. There really are girls with big hair and awful accents living in malls, women so awful that they turned the governor gay. These women really do have 400 pound boyfriends with hairy backs and low IQs. Turn signals are considered worthless luxury features, and, God help me, the whole state really does smell. However, it’s New Jersey’s consummate crappiness that ultimately makes it so great.
Radio personality Jean Shepard once said that New Jersey was “the most American of all states. It has everything from wilderness to the Mafia. All the great things and all the worst. For example, Route 22.” Route 22, for those of you who don’t know, is- I kid you not- a 24 hour strip mall that runs the length of the state. What is more quintessentially New Jersey- nay, more quintessentially American- than that?
It’s also the only place to go at 3 AM when you decide it’s a good time to get some coffee and disco fries, or perhaps visit White Castle, the only burger joint with the gall to call their visibly greasy laxative rat-patties “Sliders.”
While not unique to the state, White Castle’s hamburgers share a few characteristics with New Jersey: they’re both guilty pleasures, they only appeal to a small portion of the population, and they’re both ironically nicknamed. New Jersey is, after all, the “Garden State,” which in New Jersey-speak means “densely populated paved hellscape.” In fact, New Jersey is the most densely populated state of the union, which might lead you to believe that the state is crowded and polluted. It is. But the large population isn’t all bad.
Because of its population density, New Jersey serves as a cultural microcosm of America as a whole. It is the proverbial “melting pot,” where Godless, homosexual, French hippie crackheads live just a stone’s throw away from inbred, racist, unwashed redneck crackheads. I know, because they’re throwing stones at each other all the time.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ,“This still sounds completely awful.” Like I said earlier, it is awful, and everyone there knows it. For a while, New Jersey considered changing its state song to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” Not only would this have been the only state song to contain the word “suicide,” but also the only one about trying desperately to get the hell out of the state.
New Jersey itself imbues its residents with motivation; living in the Garden State is a bit like boot camp; at first it breaks you down, but your desire to survive is so strong that you are rebuilt into a stronger, better person. Unfortunately, the nature of this motivation doesn’t necessarily work in the state’s favour, as most of the state’s luminaries’ primary motivation is to leave. Sometimes, this motivation manifests itself in extreme ways. For example, Hoboken’s Frank Sinatra never returned to his hometown, and Montclair’s Buzz Aldrin migrated all the way to the moon.
Still, New Jersey’s loss is the nation’s gain. The socialization process in New Jersey is so effective that the consensus of the scientific community (in New Jersey) is that New Jersey expatriates are objectively cooler than everyone else. There are numerous examples of this indisputable fact: New Jersey gave the world Allen Ginsberg, Alfred Kinsey, William Carlos Williams, Abbot and Costello, and Jack Nicholson.
However, lest I overstate the cultural contributions of the great state of New Jersey, I feel the need to acknowledge that many of the things that are important to New Jerseyians don’t always enjoy the same level of prominence outside of the state. For example, if you’ve ever held a 2-minute conversation with anyone from New Jersey, you’ll know that the state gave the world the musical genius known cordially as “The Boss.” You know, “BRUUUUUUUUCE!!!!” However, if you’ve ever held a conversation with someone who doesn’t hail from New Jersey, you’ll know that they don’t really care that much. Fortunately, the Garden State is so densely populated that it contains something like 85% of America’s population, so these naysayers are in the minority.
New Jersey has also given the world Whitney Houston, Jerry Lewis, and Jon Bon Jovi, but as a state, we are willing to officially apologize. That’s the thing about people from New Jersey. They’re good, common people, and they’re willing to call a spade a spade, or an awful entertainer an awful entertainer, as the case may be. Under the rough façade, they also have an inner reserve of strength and decency that’s necessary to live in the most godforsaken place on earth without murdering someone.
New Jersey isn’t perfect, or even particularly nice, but it’s still got a lot to offer. So next time you want to talk trash about New Jersey, remember all the good things it’s given the world. Failing that, remember that everyone in the state has a cousin named Tony who’s willing to break all your windows.