Halanna

So I'm laying on the couch with a little stomach bug, munching on saltines and scrolling through daytime tv. Something I rarely do. I come across Jerry Springer, a show I've certainly heard of but never seen. So, *pushes button* I'm now watching Jerry Springer.

We have a Mom who does not like her step-son's ex-girlfriend. She's there to tell the ex to leave her SS and his new GF alone. Ex has 3 kids with SS, GF is pregnant. So we have 4 kids, step son, new girlfriend, ex girlfriend and Mom.

Mom tells her story, ex comes out screaming, they start slapping each other and pulling hair. Mom calls ex the town whore and the audience starts yelling, "Sit down whore" !!

What?!?!?!

What on earth? This is not entertainment! But aside from that, I'm left with the question of "Why?"

Why are these people going on national tv and airing this type of personal business, not to mention the way they behave. Is it a misplaced need for attention? Are they paid to appear? Then there was a commercial for Maury, 9 men 1 baby, whose the Daddy? Why?

Why, why, why. I can't fathom why these people go on tv and do this. Why do you think they do?

jewels

Gee, it sounds exactly like the last two shows I saw a few years back.

I think they realized that the more inane the story, the more viewers they had.

Yup. They pay the airfare, hotel and meals and actually get them even more riled up before the show. And I remember one of those "who's the daddy" stories with this girl that was on the show numerous times with numerous men, trying to determine the daddy. I think they'd gone through about 40 guys and still hadn't found him. Sad or funny?

I think some of it's true, but some of it's just gotta be stuff people make up to get the trip to Chicago or wherever it's filmed. Looking for their 15 minutes of fame, I suppose.

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CinnamonGirl

Oh, Jerry. I miss watching you on Channel 5 with Norma Rashid, before you gave crazy, crazy people a place to air their dirty laundry on national television...



Yeah. I don't get it either. Then again, I also don't understand the popularity of reality TV or the Jonas Brothers.

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Strange Famous

A lot of the so called guests are just actors - certainly a few similar shows in the UK got caught out faking it.

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Crack

One day I will earn my Jerry Beads.

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Shauk

It's just exploitation of the Trailer Park drama that us civilized types don't have the pain of having to endure, so they torture us with it by proxy.

I refuse to watch that show, I used to live with people who LOVED that show, and I wanted to stab them all.

Daniel_

Are they like anal beads?

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Crack

they are similar insomuch as they are both round bead shaped things...

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Schwan

I only get to watch it once in a while, but it's like staring into infinity. Can't. Stop.

IdeoFunk

The Jerry Springer show is hilarious; that being said I can only tolerate seeing about 10 minutes of it per year.

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mixedmedia

Well, first there was Morton Downey, Jr.
But I attribute a combination of 'Jerry Springer' and 'Cops, ' later followed by 'Fear Factor' to be the chief harbingers of the death knell of western civilization. May your downward spiral be as painless and uneventful as possible.

Peace.

It would have come whether you actually watched or not *shrug*

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Psycho Dad

Springer is like pro wrestling without the steroids.

It's entertainment for people that want to see that kind of thing without believing it is fake. Once the fans of this type of thing admit it is fake, they move on and never admit to watching it in the first place.

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yournamehere

I'm usually pretty much a pacifist, but in this case you have my blessing. Go ahead.

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hunnychile

Ditto.

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UnclearContent

I worked with a guy once who was on that show. He said they paid for his everything in exchange for him learning a script. He said not a damn bit of it was true.

He was happy because he had a free vacation to Chicago complete with daily spending money .

BenChuy

*shudder*

Fotzlid

When I was doing my maternity rotation, I met someone who was on one of those shows. Don't remember if it was Maury, Montel or Jerry, but then again, it doesn't really matter.
Anyway, she was on one of the "Whose the Daddy?" episodes. She sounded rather proud she was on the show.
No, I didn't ask if she was going back for another episode.

Lasereth

Oh come on, it's entertainment in the same way that Pro Wrestling is entertainment. Fake but entertaining to some people, even if they know it's fake.

Let's see: we have the option of watching people slap each other for money and spew cuss words on TV and have the audience roaring for more, orrrrr we get to listen to Jon and Kate tell us what the fucking kids are eating for breakfast. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with one if there's nothing wrong with the other. Both polar opposites, both stupidly entertaining to some people.

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mixedmedia

there is a way out.

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Halx

Red pill? Blue pill?

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MSD

Jerry, Maury, and Deal or No Deal just moved to Stamford CT. Every day I drive past a line of people camping out at 8:00 to get tickets for a 10:00 filming as I'm driving to work.
At least talk shows are actors or people who have brought it on themselves. Jon and Kate fans just can't get enough of watching a woman with borderline personality disorder emotionally abuse her family.

Fremen

I grew up with a woman that was on Oprah when she did those kind of shows.

I was embarrassed as hell to see her up on stage airing her dirty laundry in public.
I couldn't look away, though.

We have, in our make-up, something that is drawn to the spectacle.

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wooÐs

The tattooed and toothless trailer trash on Springer aren't intelligent enough to learn a script, much less read one. It's all real in my book. Being able to announce 'I was on Springer' is as rewarding for them as is having another child out of wedlock. It's like a trophy.

cyklone

I've watched it for several seconds as I change channels. It is like a car smash. You don't want to look in case you see something horrible but you can't look away. Then you see something truly gory, look away, and wish you had the strength not to have looked in the first place.

fresnelly

I can't quite reconcile the hand holding the cable. It keeps turning into a bow-legged skeletal figure with a sort of Cake/Spark plug for a head. Weird.

Jerry Springer and his ilk are the gatekeepers to hell.

After revulsion I feel sad for the guests' desperate and destructive narcissism.

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corona

I cannot bring myself to watch him

lizsmith12

I've been watching this show when I was like 5 years younger than now and everytime I watch it I feel so bad towards other people (there's always someone who we have pity on, right). But somehow, what I don't understand is the same thing with what you don't understand, why are they letting this show get into their private lives. Really sad but still true, that this kind of reality show gets good rating.

Maybe it's just an indication that most of the people can reflect to this kind of show, meaning this happens to most of us too.

Poppinjay

Maury does the "Who's the daddy?" stuff. It's real. Springer does actually have a big team of producers that trace down many of their guests, but there is some scripting going on. Ever notice that his is the only show that has "guests" openly assaulting each other? Can't get away with that without a seriously wordy blameless clause, backed up by money.

Springer is almost completely unattached from production of the show. So the whole part where he seems confused at times is real.

Remember the murder stemming from a Jenny Jones show? If Springer guests were sincere in their hatred of each other, there would have been at least 5 or 6 by now.

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SSJTWIZTA

certainly. my old acquaintance chris nelson (some of you might know him as one of the many Doink the clowns or Classy Chris) was on the springer show a few times. he poped out his fake teeth once and played a drunken slob of a KKK member. t'was awesome.

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dlish

errr...no thanks crack. i though i'd seen more than my fair share of your dirty laundry!

i think springer is a LEGEND! if i was home during my uni days, i would make sure that springer was on. it was either that or The Days of Our Lives

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loquitur

I'm at work usually when Springer is on, and I watch very little TV anyway, so I end up seeing his show maybe once a year. It's weirdly fascinating, almost like a car accident. But I'm glad I don't have the ability to watch more than once a year or so, because I'm convinced that if I watched it any more often, the frontal lobes of my brain would melt into a gooey jellylike substance and leak out my ears. <shudder>

I was, however, charmed to learn that in London, one of the West End stage shows was "Jerry Springer: The Opera." I wonder if it's still playing.