Panelists and Columbus Metropolitan Club guests and sponsors teamed up against reality show host Jerry Springer at yesterday’s forum, “Politics, Reality TV and Polite Conversation,” to blame his show and shows like it for the apparent lack of civil political discourse and the presence of someone like Donald Trump in the presidential campaign.
Moderator Jo Ingles from Ohio Public Radio listed off a few titles of this week’s Jerry Springer episodes, like “My Transexual Cousin Wants My Man” and “Sorry Sis, Your Man Is Fair Game.” Ingles, Former Ohio House Representative Ted Celeste and columnist and Ohio University Associate Professor Thomas Suddes, said the themes, the screams and the inevitable resort to physical violence has had an impact on how members of society interact with each other.
“That’s what the show is about,” Springer retorted. “The show is about either dysfunctional or out of the ordinary or inappropriate behavior in a personal relationship.”
Later he said the backlash toward his show stems from elitism, that people will rag on his show only to turn the TV on at 11:30 and watch beautiful TV/movie stars engage in the same kind of behavior. He said the only reason people hate on his show is because the participants look, dress and speak differently.
Springer further refused to shoulder the blame, saying he holds the mainstream media as a whole responsible for the inability of everyone from constituents to representatives to converse ‘civilly’ about ideas on which they don’t agree.
“A journalist will never ask the person, ‘Before we run the story, if this casts you in a bad light, if this hurts your family, if this hurts your reputation, we won’t do it,’” Springer said. “No, you wanna get better ratings, you wanna sell your newspapers. And so therefore the hottest story you can run, be damned how you’re hurting the person you’re writing about.”
Springer continued by saying that 80 percent of the news stories reported now are unnecessary, and that even though “The people have the right to know” is a commonly uttered sentiment, he argued that people don’t need to know every event, every court case, every story; they just would like to know; the drama is interesting.
Suddes agreed with this point, but added that the increasing importance of identity politics has also had its impact.
“It used to be about ‘Who’s going to fill my pothole, who’s going to finish the freeway, who’s going to widen the streets and pick up the litter?’” Suddes said. “And now it’s become about ‘Well, you’re different than I am, and I’m a better person than you are because of that.’”
It’s true that identity politics have taken center stage in recent years, with disenfranchised groups getting more of the spotlight than ever before. Just the past five years have seen sweeping policy changes affecting the lives of women, people of color and LGBTQ individuals. At the same time their presence on reality TV, daytime shows, movies, forums, etc. has been not only elevated, but has come to be expected.
Suddes said (after clarifying that he wasn’t trying to be PC) that the elevation of these groups of individuals has made older white men uncomfortable and insecure. While their place in the social hierarchy isn’t changing, everyone else’s is. Sharing empowerment might be interpreted as giving up the empowerment they’ve owned for centuries. That’s why they rally behind Trump, a candidate severed from the recent liberal changes and disconnected from career politics.
All agreed that the problem is exacerbated by social media. Political conversation has morphed into quippy tweets, Facebook posts and hashtags, restricting the possibility for a meaningful dialogue. Comment sections of online articles are often joked about as being one of the most deplorable places on the internet. Trolls hide behind an obscene handle and post comments for no reason other than to stir the pot.
Sometimes trolls are bored 13-year-old boys, and sometimes they’re something much more menacing. We’ve all seen the effects of internet harassment. The Gamergate controversy from 2014 told us that even in anonymity, the trolls of the internet can gang together to scare women out of their houses and into hiding.
A more recent example of this is how commenters drove feminist and author Jessica Valenti off of the internet after she received rape and death threats toward her 5-year-old daughter:
This phenomenon is something waiting to be addressed. Internet moderation is usually handled by whoever runs the individual site. Law enforcement doesn’t have the resources or the time to investigate every idle threat someone sends through the interwebs. Feminists and other social justice advocates have called for some kind of action, though the temporary solution may be to remove comment sections altogether.