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Monday, 24 March, 2008 0:07 AM
Jerry Springer discusses his
show, race, censorship and politics at Wayne State University
PHOTO
BY JASON RZUCIDLO / ©AMERICAJR.com
Television
host Jerry Springer addressed the crowd at the General Lectures
building on the campus of Wayne State University last Wednesday.
DETROIT --
On Wednesday, talk show host Jerry Springer brought his college
tour to Detroit and spoke to students at Wayne State University.
He showed clips from his daytime talk show, discussed them and took
questions from the audience. Springer also added some political
commentary at the end. He stayed later to sign autographs and meet
students at the university.
Springer, 64,
is the current host of the popular Jerry Springer Show,
which is aired at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays on WMYD-TV, Channel
20 in Detroit. He is also the host of America's Got Talent,
a reality-competition program which will air this summer beginning
in July on WDIV-TV, Channel 4.
"In the
beginning, the show started out as a relatively boring show,"
said Springer. "I'm sorry about the way I look but it didn't
get any better as the years went on. Times have changed. Now on
our show everyone goes through a metal detector. Now we're known
for the fights. Now people come on the show to fight. I think if
you took those guests and put them on Oprah, they would sit there
very politely."
At a taping of the talk
show, he doesn't know what the episode will be about. It is all
kept secret until the minute it begins. Springer has a card that
tells him the names of the guests but he doesn't know why they are
on the show. He starts every segment with: "What's going on?"
"My job is to ask
questions you would be asking at home," he said. "I don't
know what the story is. Ninety percent of the issues we do aren't
serious. It's about dating. Yep, you aren't happy at the moment
but the next day you're dating someone else."
One episode that was
controversial featured a man who married a horse. "It was wrong,"
Springer said. "Again, this is a story you think, wait a second,
that's made up. He lived outside of St. Louis about 50 miles. When
you went to his home, his hallways were extra wide so his horse
could navigate up and down the hallways. He literally lived with
his horse. We did a follow-up show and the horse left him. Those
horses are so judgmental.
"This really was
in the 17 years the sickest show. In fact, lots of [television]
markets wouldn't run it. I can't tell you that I blame them. Each
market makes it own decision. But again, I show up and there's the
show. We're not allowed to have censorship and I wouldn't want to
be a part of a show that had censorship. As long as it's real and
it's outrageous it's entitled to be on."
Springer had to defend
his show when Congress came after it. He believes the show deserves
to be aired.
"I would never tell
people you are to watch the show," he said. "If you like
it, great. If I were in college, obviously I would watch it. It's
not aimed at your grandparents. In college, it's the one hour escape
from studying. It's fun. It's a hoot. I understand that and that's
all it's put on for. I did go before city councils and the government
to argue against it's being censored. I believe the arguments against
shows like this are purely elitist.
"We call these shows
trash. We call the guests trash. About 13 years ago, Princess Di
was on international television. It was a British host who interviewed
her for an hour with no commercials. It was shown throughout the
world. In that interview, Princess Di talked about cheating in her
marriage, having bulimia, talked about contemplating suicide. All
these issues, not the suicide, are on everyday talk shows. And not
one person said, how dare Princess Di go on international television
and talk about that. No one called it trash."
Springer believes that
people only want to hear the stories of others who are beautiful,
wealthy, and celebrity-like. People who are poor, unknown and don't
look as good are not aired on talk shows. He says celebrities who
write books, make music and movies gets all the time they want in
the media spotlight but the regular person gets no time at all.
"If you didn't like
the subject matter, you wouldn't permit news to be on anymore,"
said the talk show host. "You wouldn't have newspapers. You
wouldn't have magazines. Do you think there's anything on our show
that beats the headlines in your papers? Of course not. I can go
to your newspaper every single day and find 25 stories that could
be on our show. In any newspaper in America. When people blast these
shows for trash, it is purely elitist. They are not complaining
about the subject matter. They can't get enough of it in every other
form of the media."
He also explained that
other races and cultures should get equal representation on American
television. Springer said that most shows feature characters that
are upper, middle-class white.
"If you were African-American,
you had to be on one of the side networks," he said. "Or
if you were Cosby, you had to be a doctor living in the suburbs.
The only thing you saw on television was white, upper middle-class.
The news stations all of a sudden wanted to be politically correct.
There was always one anchor of one nationality or skin color. But
they all had to speak upper middle-class white english.
"They could not
speak the dialect of their neighborhood or their upbringing. I'm
not saying there's anything wrong with an upper white middle-class
perpective. I was raised as that. But it shouldn't be the only perspective
you get in the free media. Free media ought to reflect the entire
culture. All the top rated sitcoms over the last 25 years are all
the same. All upper middle-class white. The truth is not all America
looks like that. Certainly not all of America lives like that. But
have every other part of our culture reflected in the free media
as well. That's why we fight to keep these shows. Not to tell you
to watch it but not to take it off."
Springer believies that
our culture has changed for the positive. He said that people are
now more open about themselves. His show was the first to air transsexuals
and gay men. There was protests about the episode when it was first
aired 13 years ago. He said there wouldn't be any protests if that
particular episode was aired today.
"Thirteen years
ago if you showed gay people on television particularly guys kissing
there were protests, pickets, threats from advertisers to stop advertising
the show, take the show off the air," he said. "I'll be
the first to say our show is just stupid. We had a show early on
about interracial dating. We now have a product of interracial marriage
running for president of the United States. The issue is, that's
how far we've come as a culture.
"For all the craziness
of the show it does have its impact. The impact has been very, very,
very positive as a culture. Who wants to live in a society that
discriminates? The fact that we're much more open now and we don't
even have to talk about it in a politically correct way. We can
even joke about it, that's the acceptance that we now have."
The talk show host admits
that he is a Democrat. You won't pickup on that by watching his
television show. He was the mayor of Cincinnati from 1977-1978.
"Here I travel around
the country doing America's Got Talent which will start
in July again," Springer said. "Most of the time, I do
politics. I give political speeches around the country, raise money,
help organize, do stuff like that. That's my real passion in life.
That's the thing I get serious about. The show is my business, that's
how I make my living. It's fun to do but politics I take seriously
like religion.
"First of all, Michigan
is right in the middle of this whole Democratic party debate. It's
a crime if Michigan doesn't get to vote. I'm a partisian so in fairness,
if you're a Republican, you're not going to particularly care what
I say. As a Democrat and a life-long Democrat, we are crazy if we
throw away Michigan and Florida."
PHOTO
BY JASON RZUCIDLO / ©AMERICAJR.com
Springer
says that guests must sign an agreement that outlines 21 possible
surprises that might happen during a show before they can appear
on television.
PHOTO
BY JASON RZUCIDLO / ©AMERICAJR.com
Jerry
Springer participated on TV's Dancing with the Stars in
2006. "It was a lot of fun to do," he said.
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