Jerry defends his crazy ways to adoring Yalies

"My show is chewing gum," Jerry Springer joyfully admitted. "It has no value in society." In a packed SSS 114 on Thurs., Feb. 24, the infamous host of The Jerry Springer Show worked the crowd with wry wit and obvious intelligence—as well as surprising candor. "My show is stupid," Springer said. "Sometimes, we have more guests than teeth."

After trivializing his own work, the former TV news anchor and Cincinnati mayor attacked politics, television journalism, and the white upper-middle class Zeitgeist in which he has spent much of his own life. Upon finishing his disquisition, Springer, clad casually in a gray suit-jacket thrown over a black Polo shirt, sipped at bottled water with seeming amusement while several hundred Yalies stood up and chanted "Jerry!"

But amidst the three-piece suits and ornate wood paneling, and cognizant of Yale's wealthy, predominantly white student body, Springer deployed a class-based defense of his show. "As God's truth, the horror at our show is a class thing," he said.

Springer asserted that mainstream television displays the same violence and troubling emotional issues as his program, but avoids obloquy by catering to white, upper-middle class viewers. He described a television appearance by the late Princess Diana that he said addressed issues of infidelity, bulimia, and suicide. These things were deemed acceptable in that context, Springer said, because the princess was pretty, well-known, and "spoke the Queen's English." His guests address similar issues, Springer continued, but are branded offensive because "they're less well-dressed or well-educated—but they're still people."

Springer vehemently defended his program's right to be seen, whatever its flaws. Television, he claimed, is "how we talk to America nowadays." Moreover, he asserted, his controversially rowdy and outrageous talk show is "maybe the only show on TV that doesn't glorify violence and dysfunction." He pointed to local evening news programs as far more exploitative; "news hurts people every day" because it forces its way into people's lives. The Springer Show, meanwhile, only showcases guests who approach it. "It's not a difference in degree—it's a difference in substance," he maintained.

But is Springer the emcee of this showcase, or the referee? The show's tendency to induce fighting, he said, hardly ever results in injury. "Ninety-nine percent of the time [guests] don't even hit each other," he claimed. But the carnage that does arise, according to Springer, is merely part and parcel of universal human experience. And it's also what makes Jerry different from all the rest. As he put it, "If people call us with a normal, warm, uplifting story, we send [them] to Oprah."

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