Month: February 2017

Nothing is more synonymous with trash TV—or early reality TV—than the syndicated The Jerry Springer Show. Former mayor of Cincinnati Springer has taped almost 4000 episodes over the course of 26 seasons, and featured more than 35,000 guests. Because the format allowed for crass topics and guests who weren’t afraid to throw chairs at each other, in the late 1990s the show’s ratings topped Oprah Winfrey’s. Over the years, guests have accused the producers of staging and encouraging the fights for ratings. Still, it’s been popular enough to remain on the air since September 30, 1991. Here are 12 final thoughts about the controversial talk show, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year.

1. THE FIRST SEASON TAPED IN CINCINNATI.

Before he stepped in front of the cameras, Springer’s main gig was in politics. He (unsuccessfully) ran for Congress in 1970, but was elected to Cincinnati’s city council a year later. In 1977, he served as the city’s mayor for one year and made a run for governor in 1982, but was derailed by a sex scandal.

In September 1991, Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT needed to replace The Phil Donahue Show, so they tapped Springer to host his own politically-focused daytime talk show, The Jerry Springer Show. At the same time, he was also appearing as a nighttime co-anchor on WLWT. In 1992, Springer moved The Jerry Springer Show to Chicago; he flew back and forth between Cincy and Chicago every day so that he could continue hosting his nightly broadcast. But in 1993 he resigned from Channel 5, after the ratings slid. 

2. TWO ANCHORS QUIT BECAUSE SPRINGER APPEARED ON THEIR NEWS SHOW.

In 1997, Springer began a temporary job on Chicago’s WMAQ as a news commentator. Anchor Carol Marin, who had worked at the station for 19 years, refused to share airtime with Springer and quit the show. “I am sorry she found it necessary this week to use me as the stepping stone to martyrdom,” Springer said at the time. In solidarity with Marin’s decision, co-anchor Ron Magers departed a few weeks later. Dozens of people from religious and women’s organizations protested the station’s nighttime addition as well.

The heat ended up being too much for the station; in May 1998, it dropped The Springer Show, though a Fox affiliate quickly snatched it up. To cover costs, they had to air the show not once, but twice a day.

3. SECURITY DIRECTOR STEVE WILKOS THOUGHT HIS JOB WAS A “ONE-TIME GIG.”

The show hired Steve Wilkos, a former Chicago cop and marine, for a 1994 KKK-themed episode. “The pay was good and I figured it was a one-time gig,” Wilkos told Mediaweek. “But I ended up doing another show, and another, and before I knew it, I was hired as the full-time director of security. So, I left my career as a cop to give this a shot.”

Eventually, Wilkos gave advice on a “Steve to the Rescue” segment, and started subbing for Springer when the host went off to appear on Dancing with the Stars. That led to Wilkos getting his own show, The Steve Wilkos Show, in 2007.

4. THE SHOW WAS TARGETED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

In 1998, at the show’s peak popularity, education secretary William Bennett and Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman spoke at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention and implored broadcasters to remove the program from their schedules. “Drop it, or if you won’t drop it, urge the producers to clean up the show,” Lieberman pleaded.

“We’re here for three reasons,” Bennett added. “The first is to remind broadcasters of the high standards they once had; the second is to remind people in the business how low much of it has sunk, and also to remind people of the enormous influence and responsibility they wield.”

“The kind of perversity and violence on that show every day has to have a bad effect on the people and children who watch it,” Lieberman said. “Springer is not a network show. You make the decision to carry it. It’s not worth it … If you can’t do that, at least put it on late at night so that fewer kids are watching.”

5. SPRINGER STARRED IN HIS OWN MOVIE.

At the apex of his popularity, Springer played a talk show host named Jerry Farrelly in the 1998 box office and critical bomb Ringmaster. The movie, like Springer’s talk show, involved love triangles and cheating. It did win Springer an award, though: a Razzie for Worst New Star.

6. RELIGIOUS LEADERS FORCED THE SHOW TO TONE DOWN ITS VIOLENCE.

Under pressure from Chicago religious leaders, executives from The Jerry Springer Show promised to reduce the violence, though the fights are what helped it topple Oprah in the daytime talk show ratings. “We don’t want to take away from the show—we just think that Jerry will be able to do this show a different way,” Greg Meidel, the chief executive of then-distributor Studio USA, told the Los Angeles Times in 1998. “It will still be confrontational, it will still be unpredictable, you will still sense the conflict. You will still see yelling and screaming. But we’re not going to show anyone getting hit.”

A spokeswoman for the religious Community Renewal Society felt it was a “partial victory,” but she also called for the cursing and poor treatment of women to be toned down.

7. AUSTIN POWERS PARODIED SPRINGER.

In the opening of 1999’s Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Scott Evil (Seth Green) appears on The Jerry Springer Show—Springer cameos as himself—and confronts his father, Dr. Evil, who plots to take over the world. In typical Springer Show fashion, a fight breaks out and a lot of cursing spews from the guests’ mouths.

8. ONE FEATURED LOVE TRIANGLE ENDED IN A MURDER.

In 2000, during an episode called “Secret Mistresses Confronted,” a husband, his new wife, and his ex-wife appeared on the show and got into a tiff. The newlyweds accused the ex, Nancy Campbell-Panitz, of stalking them. But hours after the episode aired, a friend of Campbell-Panitz discovered her dead, beaten body inside her home. Eventually, Campbell-Panitz’s ex-husband and his new wife turned themselves in. In 2002 the case went to trial and the court found the ex-husband, Ralf Panitz, guilty of second-degree murder. He is currently serving a life sentence in prison.

9. SPRINGER ELIMINATED THE WORD “TRANNY.”

The Jerry Springer Show was one of the first talk shows to focus on transgender issues, but he regularly referred to his guests as “trannies,” like in a 2014 episode named “Trannies Twerk it Out.” The LGBT community felt it was time to phase out that word, and Springer immediately obliged. “I didn’t know it was offensive to them and I’m not interested in offending people, so obviously I’ll just change the term,” he told The Huffington Post. “There’s no argument there.”

10. THE SHOW PRODUCED A CONTROVERSIAL EPISODE ON BESTIALITY.

A 1998 episode entitled “I Married a Horse” featured a British man who married his horse. Cameras went overseas to film the man and his “wife.” A disclaimer opened the segment: “Sexual content with animals is illegal in this country and most of the Western world. This is the first film to examine a subject which many find deeply disturbing.” Some stations found the episode so disturbing that they refused to air it, opting instead to broadcast a rerun of “Past Guests Do Battle.”

11. IT WAS TURNED INTO AN OPERA (WHICH ALSO CREATED CONTROVERSY).

A musical version of the show, Jerry Springer: The Opera, debuted in London in April of 2003 and toured the UK in 2006. The production drew ire from the Christian community, because it included actors playing God, Satan, and Jesus, and the actors uttered about 8000 obscenities. When the BBC decided to air a performance in 2005, 45,000 angry viewers contacted the station about the show’s content. But, that didn’t prevent the opera from expanding to the U.S. In 2007, Las Vegas became the first American city to welcome the show. In 2008, Harvey Keitel played Springer in a two-day New York City performance.

12. SPRINGER MOVED THE SHOW TO STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT.

In 2009, after spending 17 years in Chicago, The Jerry Springer Show moved to the east coast and besieged the idyllic town of Stamford, because Connecticut offered tax breaks and built the Stamford Media Center to create a local entertainment industry. Springer’s arrival was met with protests from the community. But it continues to shoot there to this day.

For one London congregation, dressing in their Sunday best means donning a red foam nose, oversized shoes, and a bowler hat. As the Agence France-Presse reports, the All Saints Church in East London is home to an annual church service for clowns, who gather each year on the first Sunday of February to pay tribute to their icon, 18th-century English comedian and pantomime performer Joseph Grimaldi.

Grimaldi, who died in 1837, was one of the world’s first circus clowns. He’s credited with creating the modern archetype of the clown as a mischievous—yet innocent—figure, and for being the first to don all-white make-up. (“Joey,” a slang term for pantomime clowns coined by author George Bernard Shaw, was inspired by Grimaldi.) But despite his happy façade, Grimaldi led a tragic private life, and his signature style of physical comedy led to him developing a host of painful physical ailments, including arthritis.

The first church service honoring Grimaldi’s memory was held in 1946, at a since-demolished church in the London borough of Islington (home to Grimaldi’s grave). Now in its 71st year, the event draws members of the clowning industry from around the world who wish to celebrate Grimaldi, “and to pay…last respects to all those clowns who passed on to the big top in the sky during the previous year,” states the website of Clowns International, a non-profit that describes itself as “the oldest established club for clowns and friends of clowns.”

This year’s Annual Grimaldi Clown Service fell on February 5 and drew dozens of attendees. The program featured hymns, a prayer dedicated to the clowning profession, and tributes to clowns past and present.

“Clowns are the catalyst to laughter,” speaker MC Mattie the Clown told attendees, according to CNN. “And as Charlie Chaplin said: ‘A day without laughter is a day wasted.'”

Check out a video of this year’s clown-themed church service below.

[h/t Agence France-Presse]

More than four decades after its end, the Vietnam War remains synonymous with unrest in the U.S. After all, the country entered the fray in earnest in the 1960s, the decade that ushered in all kinds of change across the land. But those shifts weren’t all cultural. As engineers applied the lessons learned from the century’s earlier wars, huge advancements in military weaponry were afoot, or rather, in the air. mental_floss examines the ways aviation technology drove the Vietnam War.

1. AT FIRST, THE U.S. FOCUSED ON AERIAL OPERATIONS. 

The “War to End All Wars” didn’t exactly do so; neither did the international conflicts after it. But aerial weapons research started during WWII did greatly affect U.S. military strategy in Vietnam. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. had built an impressive fleet of aircraft. Its arsenal included everything from stealth jets used for reconnaissance, such as the Lockheed YO-3 “Quiet Star,” to bombers including the AC-130 Spectre, one of the deadliest aircraft ever, to fighter jets including the Martin B-57B, which was the first American jet to be used in Vietnam. The sheer number and variety of aircraft in the U.S. forces’ arsenal made it seem as if victory from above would be imminent. When President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965, the idea was to stop the spread of Communist forces while avoiding a land war and minimizing the loss of American lives. Instead, it went on to become the longest sustained aerial bombing campaign in U.S. history, and fully pulled the U.S. into the lengthy conflict.

2. AMERICAN POWS WERE MOSTLY PILOTS AND OTHER AIRMEN. 

Aerial attacks may have weakened North Vietnamese and Communist forces, but they also served to strengthen their resolve. With help from China and the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese Army soon deployed surface-to-air missiles and radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery. The highly effective Soviet S75-Dvina was one of the first high-altitude air defense systems designed to be mobile. (Now, of course, most modern systems focus on mobility.) The massive success of these defensive machines helps explain why, for the first time, the majority of American prisoners of war were pilots and other airmen.

3. HELICOPTERS ENABLED SMALL SEARCH AND RESCUE MISSIONS, SAVING LIVES. 

There’s a reason Vietnam is referred to as The Helicopter War. Though the U.S. first used helicopters in World War II and then later in the Korean War, they relied on them like never before during Vietnam. With their ability to fly at low altitudes while holding heavy weaponry, including machine guns and missiles, they made targeted strikes easier. They could also accurately drop in supplies to troops on the ground. But it was really the choppers’ ability to land in small spaces that made them useful for evacuating killed or wounded soldiers, turning them into Medevac units. One copter in particular, the Bell UH-1 helicopter—affectionately referred to as the “Huey”—became an unofficial symbol of U.S. troops. “It’s the noisy one. It’s the one that really hacks into the air and makes that whomp noise,” explains former U.S. pilot Richard Jellerson, who wrote and produced the 2001 documentary The Personal Experience: Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam. “It was like a truck, it was easy to fix and could take any amount of punishment. Some of them came back with so many holes, you just wouldn’t believe they’d ever fly again. As a matter of fact, some of them didn’t fly again—but they did land, and the crew walked away.”

4. CHOPPERS MADE A WHOLE NEW MILITARY DIVISION POSSIBLE: AIR CAVALRY. 

Yes, helicopters aided in search and rescue efforts as well as in attacks themselves. But their ubiquity also helped bring about a brand new military division: air cavalry, or light infantry deployed by helicopters. The 1st Cavalry Division arrived in Vietnam in August and September 1965. Its missions included everything from providing recon by going behind enemy lines and conducting raids to providing supplies to ground troops. The Division saw its first (hard-won) victory in late fall of 1965 with the 34-day Drang Valley campaign, in which it located North Vietnamese fighters and engaged in close combat, before being swooped up then dropped elsewhere in swiftly choreographed maneuvers. In 1968, air cavalry were brought in to relieve the U.S. Marines under siege at Khe Sanh during the Communist forces’ Tet Offensive [PDF]. The battle was considered proof of air mobility’s importance and served as a basis for the military’s future AirLand Battle technique, focusing on coordinated land and air attacks.

5. MASSIVE BOMBER PLANES GOT THE U.S. OUT OF THE REGION. 

The U.S. first became entangled in Vietnam warfare through its use of planes, and that’s how the country ultimately ended its involvement, too. The B-52 heavy bomber was developed in the late 1940s by Boeing, and that feat of engineering allowed U.S. forces to drop a volume of bombs unlike anything that had been seen before. (In fact, the B-52 is still in use today, making it the longest running craft in America’s fleet.) It was B-52 bombers—129 of them—that dropped the 20,000-plus tons of explosives on Hanoi and its surrounding areas over the Christmas strike on North Vietnam in 1972. The strike, which was ordered by President Richard Nixon under the name Operation Linebacker II, was meant to force the North Vietnamese back to the table following a failed round of peace talks. As Vietnamese BBC journalist Ha Mi, who was 10 years old at the time, later recalled, “The fighter jets were faster and would only drop one or two bombs, then they were gone.” In contrast, the slower B-52s cast a wider net and terrorized local populations, she said: “Boom, boom, boom, for a longer period of time. It’s more threatening.” The Christmas bombing of Hanoi caused massive Vietnamese casualties, and is typically credited as leading to the Paris Peace Accord—signed the next month and sealing the United States’s withdrawal from the conflict.

6. EVENTUALLY, INTERNATIONAL LAWS CONCERNING CHEMICAL WARFARE WERE ESTABLISHED. 

The U.S.’s heavy reliance on aerial warfare led to arguably the most infamous element of the Vietnam War: widespread chemical warfare in the form of napalm. A chemical compound developed during WWII, napalm is a mixture of a gelling agent and gasoline (or a similar fuel), and releases large amounts of carbon monoxide when it explodes. Its “sticky” property also means that it will cling to surfaces—including human skin—as it burns, making napalm a particularly cruel weapon. In 1980, the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons settled on new protocols banning weapons considered both excessively injurious and indiscriminate—i.e., those that might harm civilians, a definition that would cover the incendiary weapon napalm. (Under international law, napalm and similar substances can still be used to attack military targets. Also of note: The U.S. didn’t ratify these protocols until 2009, and it may void its participation if it decides the use of napalm against enemies would save civilian lives.) For decades after the Vietnam War, choosing a method of destroying the excess liquid fire proved difficult, expensive and controversial, and the U.S. housed more than 34,500 canisters of napalm in their original 10-foot bullet-shaped canisters. By 2001, all had been recycled by a firm in Dallas Park, Texas, without incident.