September 5, 2000

8:38 PM

Jerry Springer guest pulls a Jenny Jones.A guest of the show is suspected of killing his ex-wife, who also appeared on the show earlier this year. I'll admit the Jenny Jones case was worse (getting the guests drunk, etc.), but you know Jerry doesn't really care about his guests when he says things like "The show is television ... this is life and death." What about the guests' lives and how the show affects them Jerry? Is that just television too?
posted by mathowie (6 comments total)

Having been to a taping of the Jerry Springer show, I have to say that the fact that a guest did this is about as random as saying, "A man who patronizes the Walgreen's Pharmacy shot his wife - Walgreen's to blame."

The actual show is *all* done in the editing - they cut out all the guests shouting obscenities at each other, and then breaking down with laughter, the fact that Jerry basically ignores whatever is on stage, choosing instead to do what amounts to a standup act for select members of the audience (he is really funny), and the parts where the 'panelists' are sitting around quietly, laughing and joking while the lights are adjusted, waiting for the director to cue them that tape is rolling again. The fights are staged, by the way.

I went expecting to get some fodder for a vitriolic little diatribe about shock television, but what I found was a really amusing little studio, filled with fake guests, german tourists as audience members, and Mr. Springer, who could care less what the actors on the stage are doing.
posted by kristin at 10:34 PM on September 5, 2000

Springer made an interesting point when he spoke to the Oxford Union last year: in [x] years of working in network news in Cincinnati, he'd had to doorstep the families of murder victims and terrible accidents, and loiter outside courthouses for "live reaction" to verdicts. And that was intruding on people's privacy. Compared to the real news, especially the tabloid TV which has swept the US, Springer and his ilk are paragons of virtue.
posted by holgate at 1:05 AM on September 6, 2000

I have a great deal of respect for any man who pays a hooker with a check. I'm proud to have called him my mayor!
posted by Mick at 6:33 AM on September 6, 2000

please, no one goes on that show with out knowing what it's about
posted by matucana at 7:35 AM on September 6, 2000

Is it really too much to ask people to take responsibility for their own actions unless they really cannot? Are we suposed to except that this person was driven mad by the show?
posted by davidgentle at 8:47 PM on September 6, 2000

Didn't we cover this a month ago? The date on that news story is July 29.
posted by aaron at 11:39 PM on September 6, 2000