Jerry Springer, who died Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer, had one of the most bizarre careers in entertainment. Best known for hosting the trashy, anti-Oprah daytime hit The Jerry Springer Show, Springer first entered the public eye as a politician. From there, he dabbled in acting, country music, and more reality TV, even competing on The Masked Singer and helping Dr. Evil and his son Scott repair their relationship. There was no one more recognizable for strange career choices—and strangely measured while doing so, despite his salacious credits—in the 1990s than Springer.
But the former mayor of Cincinnati will always be connected to his eponymous talk show, in which he invited guests with all kinds of beef to work it out in front of the cameras. Secret baby mamas, Nazi sympathizers, and incestuous couples were among the melange of absurd characters that populated Jerry Springer throughout its 27-year run.
While it guiltily delighted those of us who loved gratuitous, sloppy, unbelievable antics, however, the show also had a habit of turning trans people and folks of other marginalized identities into side-show figures. Throughout it all, Springer played a tame mediator, using his Northwestern University law degree to bring an antithetical sense of gravitas to the proceedings. Perhaps that’s why we lapped it up: Jerry Springer was a forum for the most attention-hungry Americans willing to beat each other up for airtime, under the careful, watchful eye of a legit lawyer who left them go at it. He was the consummate straight man, for better or worse.
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