New Jersey’s Long History as a Punchline

Friday, 24 January 2014 | by Pat's Picks

New Jersey’s role as host of the Super Bowl is sure to spark all kinds of “Jersey jokes.” But the Newark Star-Ledger says New Jersey has been a target since colonial times. Benjamin Franklin is once said to have described the wedge of land sandwiched between New York and Philadelphia as a “keg tapped at both ends.” The jokes really picked up in the 1950s, when New Jersey license plates began to carry the nickname “Garden State.”

SOURCE: Newark Star-Ledger