Strange News!
Pay grade is higher for Jersey Shore Snooki to speak at a university than to hire a Nobel Prize winner?
[Apr. 5]
Here’s a trending topic whopper of a tale. Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi of MTV reality television Jersey Shore fame, earned a whopping 32 thousand dollars for a speaking engagement at Rutgers University, and a lot of students are unhappy about the deal. Rutgers University paid two thousand more than it paid Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison.
But WetPaint.Com reports MTV starlet Snooki actually is a green celebrity. The reality television star “works with animal charities, zoos, fire departments, and burn victim charities,” the site says. And the green celebrity will be working with her home salon, House of ALR, on a Locks of Love charity event to support cancer patients who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy and other treatments.
Yep. It pains us to say it but Gen Me pop culture pop tart Snooki — who is not a green celebrity by most accounts — now can say she has joined the ranks of celebrities using their money and star power to do good. For that, we have to give her positive credit.
For instance, the Jersey Shore icon Snooki told MSNBC in an interview:
I think [green celebrities] are a huge help in charitable work, because we have a loud voice. We can get issues and things like this out to the public and make a huge impact!
“I think Locks of Love really saves the confidence in cancer patients! They already have to deal with so much, and self-image should not be one of them. So the fact that we can give [them] their beauty back and put a smile on their face makes a huge difference!”
Not everyone has gotten the message, though, and many Rutgers University students are disappointed by the often over-the-top glam style of reality television star Snooki.
One student wrote that Snooki probably would have accepted a case of beer for payment, and two others said they were ashamed to have Rutgers University choose the Jersey Shore starlet as a speaker, according to Fox News. However, the spokeswoman for Rutgers University said Snooki was paid for entirely by student fees. She was the popular student choice. And that’s their defense in picking her — because the kids said they wanted to hear her.
Others question how much the wayward reality television star was paid compared to a Nobel prize winner. Snooki is best known for spending her time offering “frivolous” lifestyle, fashion, and party advice. But in the end, craptastic life advice seems to have been what the students wanted. The guidette was in, the Nobel Prize Winner was out.
And at least we know that Snooki is giving some of those (hardly earned?) dollars to charity, making her a green celebrity after all.
Surprise, surprise… right?
However, one donation to charity does not a true green celebrity make.
[If and] When Snooki becomes a positive role model for young women to respect themselves and others while reaching out to do more good things in the community, then, she’ll be on the real green celebrity list.
Until then, students and parents of students everywhere will continue to wonder how and why it is that Snooki — the Jersey Shore mini-diva with the foul attitude and drinking problem — earns higher pay than a Nobel Prize winner to speak at a public engagement in front of graduating seniors.