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"Fights, Camera, Action": How Jerry Springer exposed the beginning of America's decline

6 0
07.01.2025

Before the man who transformed “The Jerry Springer Show” into a gladiatorial showcase of the worst common denominator took over as its executive producer, Richard Dominick made his living writing headlines for Weekly World News and the Sun such as “Two-headed Man Sings in Stereo,” "Toaster is Possessed by the Devil" or “My Wild Affair with Bigfoot. ”

The weirdest ones earned him a recurring guest gig on “Late Night with David Letterman," where he’d swear with a straight face that every story was true. In the archival clips featured in “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action,” Letterman’s audience was clearly in on the joke. Letterman’s show was a funhouse where absurdity was encouraged.

Years later, after Dominick had already made his mark on “The Jerry Springer Show” as its fortune-shifting executive producer, Mark Matthews (a pseudonym) was Springer’s guest along with his “wife” Pixel. The pair’s union shocked the studio audience in 1998, especially since they were kept in the dark about their unwitting participation in an episode called “I Married a Horse.”

“The Jerry Springer Show” aired nearly 5,000 episodes over 27 seasons before being shoved through a woodchipper in 2018, and to say that nobody missed it by the time it ended is accurate.

When Matthews kissed the Shetland pony on the mouth — on camera, with tongue — that may be the first widely televised moment when our relationship with reality, propriety and a common sense of morality began to fracture. Why didn’t anyone recognize this was wrong and stop this from happening? How could this possibly be real?

But it was. Matthews wrote an entire manifesto defending his zoophilia. I know this because every page of it was faxed to the newsroom where I worked shortly after the episode aired. The sender’s intent, as I recall, was to legitimize Matthews as someone who simply thinks differently than the typical person. As establishment journalists, who were we to judge him? Just asking questions.

Dominick’s present-day reaction to seeing the gotcha intro to “I Married a Horse” is to giggle softly, then gesture with both hands like an orchestra conductor cueing a “ta-dah!” from the brass section. “Greatest love story of all time,” he deadpans.

Related

To Dominick, it was. “The Jerry Springer Show” gave the audience the proof his tabloid stories never could, even the ones accompanied by interview footage. Most of its featured romantic betrayals and fistfights were real, revved into the red by producers taking advantage of their subject's emotional........

© Salon