I'm not someone who takes pleasure in the death of anyone (although I didn't shed any tears when Ted Bundy and John Gacy shuffled off this mortal coil with assistance from the state of Florida and Illinois, respectively; I couldn't help thinking of the Shakespeare quote...I'm paraphrasing Shakespeare here... "Nothing in their life became them like the leaving of it."), but the death of Jerry Springer elicits...a big yawn.
Certainly he's not alone responsible for the alarming societal decline in ethics, moral standards, civility, integrity, critical thinking, regard for truth, veracity and logic, etc. etc., but...to me...he's sorta emblematic of it. He might say now, from "the Great Beyond," "Was I unique? You think when they were having gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome that those people were possessed of high ethical standards? Or the mobs who gathered to watch witches being burned at the stake, or people being lynched? I was a piker. Nobody died on my watch; it was Jenny Jones who had the fatality, if you remember. I just wanted to make a little money, I was as American as apple pie, I was as much of a human being as anyone else on the planet..."
Ok. True enough. And...let's face it...Roller Derby back in the day, or wrestling, or the films of Lucio Fulci, weren't exactly all that concerned with "higher ethical standards and civility." Bloodshed and violence are the stuff of dramatic entertainment ever since the ancient Greeks invented dramatic entertainment.
I never watched a full episode of Springer. Any time I was flipping channels, and paused to watch for a minute or 2 of it, it was invariably some poor slobs being egged on to assault each other, as the audience of equally boorish Yahoos cultishly chanted out, "JERRY! JERRY! JERRY..." as the maestro behind it all...the former mayor of Cincinnati...stood languidly off to the side, well out of the way of any errant fist or punch or thrown chair inadvertently striking him and drawing blood. I found it all to be exceedingly formulaic, and stultifyingly dull, albeit stultifyingly dull in a uniquely sad, ugly manner.
I think the only segment the network ever refused to air was one where some disturbed individual had "married" his horse and "enjoyed" a man-and-wife relationship with his fetching pachyderm. The segment was recorded but never shown. I'm not sure that Jerry objected (I can't imagine him having a sudden onset of shame; shame seems to have been as foreign to him as empathy is to a sociopath); I think it was the network (and I'm sure their concern was with "the bottom line" rather than a belated sense of decency or concern over the tender sensibilities of their viewers).
Springer seems to have been a genial enough guy; I remember he appeared as a "guest" on Drew Carey's old "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (which I enjoyed watching). He didn't seem to take himself seriously. And I guess you couldn't accuse him of racism (his contempt for humanity transcended race); unlike Maury Povich, who stood off to the side with his cheesy leer as his invariably African-American "guests" verbally battled each other with malicious ferocity as they attempted to determine which of 6 or 7 guys had impregnated the gravid female. A real class act, Maury! Wonder how you sleep at night? Counting greenbacks instead of sheep, I guess.
Was slumber any easier for Springer? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Shakespeare's lines flowed through his troubled mind in those sleepless pre-dawn hours: "To die:--to sleep: No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished."
More probable, I think, is that he slept like a baby at night.
I won't miss him or his show. read more
