CHICAGO’S WAR ON JERRY SPRINGER
There are a few things I’m looking forward to this summer. I have to see the new Austin Powers movie. I can’t wait to see David Cronenberg’s new film, eXistenZ, and I want to see what is going to happen to THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW, now that the city fathers of Chicago are trying to force the show out. As in out of the city.
Chicago is a talk show town. You can’t spit in this town without hitting one talk show host or another, including Oprah, Jenny Jones and the like. When you talk trash TV, however, you have only one ringleader -- Jerry Springer. The show has almost single-handedly brought to the attention of the public the fact that in domestic quarrels women can initiate violence towards men, that gays and lesbians can initiate violence against each other. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. The press insists that heterosexual men turn to violence to keep power. If gays and lesbians have problems in that regard, it clearly isn’t a heterosexual problem. Most cops won’t even write up women that attack men, yet on the show we clearly see women, often without provocation, making the first hit. This gives liberals nightmares.
If two lesbians are in a abusive relationship, who is being abused because of their gender?
Not long ago, the Windy City Times was going to do a series on spousal abuse in gay neighborhoods. That went over like a ton of bricks. Hundreds wrote in begging the paper not to do the series. Some even threatened a boycott of all the paper’s advertisers. The paper backed away from the series.
On Springer, working-class gays, straights, blacks, whites, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans get a bombshell dropped on them and are allowed to react on camera. If they go too far, the show’s guards come forward and break them up. You would think that no one in their right mind would go on the show knowing they were about to be crushed on worldwide TV. But they come, hoping to be discovered, hoping the news they hear won’t be bad. In all the years I’ve watched the show, there has never been a happy story. Never.
Nor has there ever been a shrink on the panel to counsel people, or a former Marine to "get the person in shape". Actually, shows that try to "fix problems" usually have a high failure rate. But the audience feels good cheering as the shrink gives the guest what for or the ex-Marine yells at the delinquent kid about going straight. Springer doesn’t try to fix anything. What you see is usually what you get.
We have a priest in Chicago, Father Pfleger, who has waged campaigns against liquor ads, condom ads, and Jerry Springer. The City Council is all liberal Democratic. Two of the alderman at the hearings are leading far leftists in the city, Juan Solis and Dorothy Tillman. They do not like the portrayal of blacks and Hispanics on the show. So they joined with Ed Burke, a corporate Democrat, to try and run Springer out of town.
It’s a funny thing. When Dan Quayle said that a TV show character shouldn’t have a woman have a child out of wedlock, he was ridiculed and attacked. When Jerry Falwell attacked a Teletubbie, he was ridiculed (he has since recanted). When Tipper and Al Gore were concerned about rock music, THEY HELD GOVERNMENT HEARINGS! When the Democrats grew concerned about Springer and his show, THEY HELD GOVERNMENT HEARINGS.
When I ask supporters of the Democratic Party why the reliance on the government to bully a free press or free speech doesn’t bother them, they just shrug. I think that tendency is far more dangerous that any fight that happens on Springer.
It is odd that when Republicans were discussing the artistic merits of a crucifix in a bag of urine nailed to a wall, they never said the art shouldn’t exist, only that the public shouldn’t pay for it. Yet at the same time when many of the same aldermen that sat in on the Springer hearings heard of a painting that the Art Institute had on exhibit that they didn’t like, they marched into the museum with police in tow, took the painting outside of the museum and slashed it with a sharp object. Democrats did this. Some of the same Democrats spoke of Jerry abusing policemen by having them work as security guards!
This, however, did not get anywhere near the amount of publicity that Quayle’s comments on MURPHY BROWN did. Yet isn’t the government seizing and destroying art a little more of a problem?
Not to the left!
The first thing they wanted to know was if the fights were fake on the show. If the fights were real, they wanted to know why the police weren’t arresting the perps. (As in perpetrators).
Springer responded by saying that he was sure some people fake their stories, but the vast majority do not and what you see on the show is what happens. Somehow, this ended up being reported in the press as Springer admitting the shows were fake. THAT IS NOT WHAT HE SAID.
He then explained that if anyone on the show wanted to press charges, no one discouraged them. But no one ever does.
The image of the working class is what the aldermen were responding to. It is not a romantic or pretty picture. Visualizing gays as choreographers or actors is one thing. Watching one with no high school education battling with a transvestite over a lover is not the image the party wants. Watching a black pimp yelling at his stripper girlfriend is not the image of the worker the party wants to even know about. Ditto the lesbian who beats her lover. The working class is only romantic WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO INTERACT WITH THEM.
So, in all of television, this was the only show that gave them a forum, a place to air their pain and loves and trials. And the party could not and will not handle it. That the guests were real is beyond the left’s comprehension. So the show is under attack to try and force it out of the city.
If Springer tones down his show, his ratings will plummet. If he tries to control the working class by bringing in "experts" to give the false impression of "fixing things", his show is toast. And as a Jerry Springer fan I will miss the show. There really never was a show like that on before. He can, however, find another city. I actually hope he does that instead of censoring his show or changing his tone.
For years Democrats have claimed to be the party of the poor and the working class, but they often react with discomfort and even contempt when actually confronted with one of its country-music-lovin’, wrestling-fan representatives. They just won’t admit it. Go back and look at what they said about Paula Jones. They called her trailer trash. They said she didn’t have a college education. They called her ugly. That is what they think of the working class, and that is why they just don’t get Jerry Springer. They only like the working class when it’s not getting in their face.
I should point out that by Democrats I mean the party organizers and leaders. I actually do believe that the vast majority of guests and audience members on the show vote primarily Democratic. And think of themselves as Democrats. And that may be the most bitter pill for the party to swallow.
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