Tennessee vs New Jersey?

A year or so ago, I was visiting my parents in Rochester,N.Y. and an old friend of my brothers stopped by with his wife. I was helping dad work on his mower and was dressed appropriatly for the job.His wife made the comment "you look like your from Tennessee", now I am easy going and all so I just smiled. This guy and his wife live in Jersey outside of Philadelphia. My question is, why the comment? Does Tennessee have a bad reputation? I have lived in New York, Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I have found that life in Tennessee is near perfection to me. Why the bad rap?
I am 60 miles south of Nashville,(near the Jack Daniels distillery) which has every type of entertainment you can imagine available. They have a race track with indy races and stock car events. They have a pro football team and Hockey team.They have a lot of cultural events and Music events (not only country, and where else can you see George Jones on his way to pick up more liquer?

Now, what advantage does Jersey have over us?

what more could you ask for?

Since I lived in New Jersey and across the River in Bucks County, PA for 13 of my 20 years of existence I can give what NJ has to offer:

Two football teams (though they are "New York" teams)
An NBA team which has been to the NBA finals the past two years
An NHL team which just won the Stanley Cup

Once you leave the Trenton area and go to Princeton and Lawrenceville it is really a beautiful area. Princeton's campus rivals UNC Chapel Hill's in terms of how amazing it is.

New Jersey has beaches, and although one happens to be (regrettably) Atlantic City, Cape May pretty much evens that part out.

It's true that as you get closer to New York City (which is my favorite city to visit, so I'm not anti-NY) the state goes into complete shit, but the same can be said for areas around Philly (like Bristol), etc. I've never been to Tennessee, so I won't say New Jersey is better than Tennessee, but I wouldn't say that Tennessee is better than New Jersey.

I do know that Tennessee is better than North Carolina. God I can't wait to leave this place when I'm done college.

and for a limited time only, NJ is proud to feature the Return of its Prodigal Bum - ME.

Garbage GALORE!

chances are, she's never been to Tennessee, knows no one from Tennessee, and knows nothing about the state. Good heavens, people are dumb sometimes.

I think the only response to that is to reply, "Well, no one would ever doubt that you're a Jersey girl." Let her wonder what it means.

:)

has a bad reputation here in New Jersey. Every state has its share of ignorant assholes. You obviously met some of ours.

But, I think I would think the same no matter where I lived.