It is not public postures and measured statements that reveal the prevailing tastes and values of a people. There are other things that speak of them more eloquently — little things such as the Jerry Springer Show. This TV production is top box office in the US where it has spawned dozens of imitations.
The formula is simple. Friends and relatives are paid to appear on the program and admit to betrayals or gross behavior against each other. The show’s host, Jerry Springer, eggs his guests on to ever more embarrassing revelations, supported all the time by a baying studio audience. The result is all too often a brawl between those appearing. No reasonable person can imagine how anyone could appear before an audience of millions to make highly personal revelations, and then end up fighting with a relative or former friend. This week one of Springer’s former guests, Ralf Panitz, was found guilty of choking his ex-wife and then stamping her to death just hours after they had appeared together on the TV show.
There are three breath-taking facts about Springer and his ilk. The first is that he can deny flatly that his program contributed in any way to the murder of one of his former guests by another. The second is that tens of millions of Americans can tune in and watch these sad individuals degrading themselves and their families and their friends in this appalling manner. And as if this weren’t breath-taking enough, the third fact is that Springer was once a senior US politician. A former mayor of Cincinnati, his name has in the past even been mentioned as a possible candidate for the White House.
It is hugely popular programs like the Jerry Springer show, run by a man from whom one would expect wisdom and judgement, that ought to make us ask what on earth is going on. A nation for whom this obscene bear-garden of a TV show is compulsive viewing for millions of its citizens does not, at first sight, appear to be worthy of its pivotal international role.
What is perhaps most unnerving is the nature of all the people involved in this wicked circus. The guests, even though they are well-paid, are stupid to behave so shamelessly in public. The studio audience are stupid to imagine that their presence does anything other than demean them. The viewers at home, passively soaking up the gross spectacle beamed into their living rooms, are stupid not to switch channels and so spurn the advertising the spawns this rubbish.
However, most unnerving is the sheer cynicism with which Springer and his kind are prepared to exploit poor dupes for their considerable enrichment. They make their fortunes from people who are prepared to abandon their dignity and honor. The faceless TV bosses may argue that they are only giving the public what it wants. It’s an argument that is always trotted out by those who exploit the basest of tastes in any media.
But Springer cannot avail himself of this excuse. This is a man who held high political office and was trusted by an electorate. How can he abandon the measured, reasoned values which won him a mayoralty for the sentiments of the gutter? And is he alone among leading US personalities, or are there other US politicians out there who hold decent values just as lightly?
