GEORGE WAYNE Q & A

VANITIES

The Greatest American Antihero

Jerry Springer on television, his sex scandal, and being a God

As the ringmaster on his notorious talk show, Jerry Springer juggled feuding dwarfs and pugilistic transsexuals for 16 years, but it was the unlikely marriage of high art and his show's gutter-low subject matter that yielded Jerry Springer: The Opera, a production which started in London last year and will return for a 2006 U.K. tour. Our correspondent sits down with the host of Air America's Springer on the Radio and discusses his return to politics (he was mayor of Cincinnati), the Holocaust, and a little problem with a prostitute.

George Wayne:How many more dysfunctional trannies and incestuous rednecks are you going to foist on John and Joanna Public?

Jerry Springer: The truth is I spend more of my time now doing my political show on the radio for Air America. The television is just a couple hours a week.

G.W.Are you saying that you are now embarrassed by the legacy you are leaving on television?

J.S. Oh, no—I am proud to have the worst show in the history of television.

G.W.That's what TV Guide calls it. I have to admit that if I wake up sometimes in a good mood I turn on the Jerry Springer Show and I am in an even better mood. You are my God!

J.S. If I am your God, we don't have any holidays. We don't get them.

G.W.That other George hates you, though. George Clooney.

J.S. He's a nice guy. I don't think it's personal.

G.W.He's called you an idiot. That's not personal?

J.S. Nah. He comes from a very nice family. I was a competing news anchor with his dad. I can't take it personally. He doesn't like my show? Too bad.

G.W.He was very mean, Jerry. He was regurgitating old talk about your writing a check to some prostitute. Did that really happen?

J.S. Not really to her ... I don't want to go into details. That was 35 years ago. What do I care?

G.W.But, seriously, where is this laboratory where you breed these people on your show? I mean, it has to be rehearsed.

J.S. Oh, no. We get a thousand calls a week from people who want to be on the show. It's a cross section of America we are not used to seeing on television. American television is normally upper-middle-class white. And if it's AfricanAmerican or minority, they put them on one of the side networks. So I think we are shocked when we see people we wouldn't traditionally see on Friends or Seinfeld or whatever.

G.W.You were bom in London, where they have paid you the ultimate homage with a West End theater production all about you. How did that come about?

J.S. Because the show has become such a real part of our culture that some people in England had this idea of making this into a great opera, and it really is. I always thought that country music was my show put to music. But really opera is, because it has all the same traditional things: the chaos, the chorus, the gender misidentification, the mock tragedy, the comedy, the farce. So it really works.

G.W.In the 70s you were well on your way to being governor of Ohio. Then you suffered a tumble—

J.S. No, you got it all wrong. That whole check thing was five years before I ever became mayor of Cincinnati. I didn't become mayor until 1977, and when I served out my term, in 1982, because of term limits, I ran for governor, and then I was hired by NBC to anchor the news for 10 years.

G.W.Sixteen seasons on television—that is a lifetime in the business.

J.S. The TV show is a few hours a week, and it will go on forever because it has a niche. At some point I will stop and someone else will take it over. The radio show takes up most of my attention now. G.W.I love that bouncer guy with the bald head. J.S. Steve, yeah!

G.W.I want to see him, just once, in nothing but a pair of Speedos, trying to keep control of that show. Can you please arrange that?

J.S. I will tell him to give you a call.

G.W.That would be nice. So, at five years old you are on the Queen Mary, streaming across the Atlantic from the Holocaust to freedom in America.

J.S. Coming to America, for my family, traditional old-line immigrants, was a defining thing in my life. Everything I have is because of that sacrifice. But my parents really believed in the magic of Miss Liberty. G.W.I still do. When I see Miss Liberty I get tears. J.S. They lost their whole family in the Holocaust, so that is certainly one of the fundamental events in my life. G.W.If all else fails, you could always move back to London, where you are king.

J.S. It's a little too late for it to fail.

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