CINCINNATI, Ohio – Jerry Springer, the 79-year-old former mayor and television anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional families eager to bare all on weekday afternoons, including brawls, vulgarity, and blurred images of nudity, died Thursday.
In its heyday, “The Jerry Springer Show” was a rating juggernaut and a cultural pariah in the United States, synonymous with filthy drama. Over its 27-year history, the daytime talk show was a favorite American guilty pleasure, beating Oprah Winfrey’s show at one point. It was known for chair-throwing and bleep-filled confrontations.
Springer described it as “escapist entertainment,” while others saw it as contributing to the dumbing-down of American societal ideals.
“Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried, whether that was politics, broadcasting, or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word,” Jene Galvin, a family representative and Springer’s friend since 1970, said in a statement. “He is irreplaceable, and his loss is heartbreaking, but memories of his intellect, heart, and sense of humor will live on.”
According to the statement, Jerry Springer died quietly at home in suburban Chicago following a brief illness.
Springer joked on Twitter that he was a “talk show host, ringmaster of civilization’s end.” He’d also told folks, jokingly, that his desire for them was “may you never be on my show.”
The show terminated in 2018 after more than 4,000 episodes, never veering from its fundamental salaciousness: some of its final episodes had names like “Stripper Sex Turned Me Straight,” “Stop Pimpin’ My Twin Sister,” and “Hooking Up With My Therapist.”
Springer provided a defense against distaste in a “Too Hot For TV” film broadcast in the late 1990s when his daily program approached 7 million viewers.
“Look, television does not and must not create values; it is simply a picture of everything that is out there — the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Springer said, adding, “Believe this: The politicians and companies that seek to control what each of us may watch are a far greater danger to America and our prized freedom than any of our guests have ever been or could be.”
He also claimed that the participants in his show volunteered to be subjected to whatever scorn or humiliation was in store.
Gerald Norman Springer was born on February 13, 1944, at a London tube station used as a bomb shelter. His parents, Richard and Margot, were German Jews who fled to England during the Holocaust, resulting in numerous relatives’ deaths in Nazi gas chambers. They moved to the United States when their kid was five years old and resided in the Queens neighborhood of New York City, where Springer acquired his first Yankees baseball gear and became a lifetime admirer.
He attended Tulane University for political science and Northwestern University for law. He was involved in politics for much of his adult life, even considering a bid for governor of Ohio in 2017.
He started as an adviser in Robert F. Kennedy’s disastrous 1968 presidential campaign. Springer, who worked for a law company in Cincinnati, campaigned unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970 before being elected to the city council in 1971.
Jerry Springer resigned in 1974, citing “an abrupt move that shook Cincinnati’s political community” in The Cincinnati Enquirer. He claimed “very personal family considerations,” although he did not disclose a vice investigation involving prostitution. Springer later admitted to paying prostitutes with personal checks, which could have been the subject of one of his future episodes.
Jerry Springer considered a Senate run in 2003.
He had married Micki Velton the previous year when he was 30. Katie was born to her parents, who divorced in 1994.
Springer soon rose through the political ranks, obtaining a council member in 1975 and then mayor in 1977. He then became a renowned nighttime political commentator on local television. He and co-anchor Norma Rashid eventually helped NBC station WLWT-TV’s broadcast become the top-rated news show in the Cincinnati market.
Springer’s talk show debuted in 1991 with a more traditional structure, but after he departed WLWT in 1993, it was given a sleazy makeover.
It was voted No. 1 on TV Guide’s list of the “Worst Shows in Television History,” but it was rated gold. Springer became a superstar as a result, and she went on to host a liberal radio talk show and “America’s Got Talent,” star in the film “Ringmaster,” and compete in “Dancing With the Stars.”
“With all of the joking I do with the show, I’m fully aware and thank God every day that my life has taken this incredible turn because of this silly show,” Springer said to Cincinnati Enquirer media reporter John Kiesewetter in 2011.
Jerry Springer considered a Senate run in 2003, even before Donald Trump’s political rise from reality TV celebrity, hoping to attract “nontraditional voters,” individuals “who believe most politics are bull.”
“I connect with a whole bunch of people who probably connect to me right now more than a traditional politician,” Springer. He opposed the Iraq war and supported increasing public healthcare but did not run.
Jerry Springer also frequently referred to the country he immigrated to at age five as “a beacon of light for the rest of the world.”
Jerry Springer told a Democratic rally in 2003, “I have no other motivation than to say I love this country.”
Jerry Springer had a nationally syndicated “Judge Jerry” show in 2019 and continued to speak out on a podcast about anything that was on his mind, but his shock value had dwindled in the new era of reality television and combative cable TV talk shows.
David Bianculli, a professor at Monmouth University and a television historian, claimed in 2018 that “real life lapped him not only by other programs but by other programs.”
Despite the constraints Springer’s show imposed on his political ambitions, he accepted its legacy. Springer mentioned a quotation by then-National Review pundit Jonah Goldberg in a 2003 fund-raising infomercial ahead of a probable U.S. Senate candidature the following year, who warned of new people brought to the polls by Springer, including “slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs, and whatnots.”
Springer mentioned the quote in the infomercial and wanted to reach out to “regulators.”
SOURCE – (AP)
