PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- Piscataway Mayor Robert Smith is going to ask NBC for an apology for a skit portraying his township as the home of a polluting chemical industry.
The skit on 'Saturday Night Live' last weekend featured actor Joe Piscopo playing a slow-witted Piscataway chemical worker bragging about his home which is shown as the center of New Jersey's highway maze and chemical industry.
'The implications of the skit are just terrible,' said Smith, who says he plans to ask the president of NBC for a public, on-the-air apology.
The latest of a series of skits to use the character, showed the actor eating a sandwich at the plant as chemical dust fell onto his food.
'It makes Piscataway look like a chemical disaster area,' said Smith, who teaches environmental science at Middlesex County College in Edison.
'Our ordinances are very stringent and we're hiring a fulltime environmental officer this week,' he said.
Piscataway is considered the 'Sun Belt' of New Jersey because of its clean industry, according to Smith, who believes portrayals like the one on the NBC comedy show might discourage new industry from moving in.
Smith says he also intends to complain to the Federal Communications Commission.
