The featured photo is a screenshot of our television in 2012, when I was watching an episode of Jerry Springer in North Carolina.
Yesterday, after I wrote yet another heartfelt post that I suspect most people won’t bother to read in its entirety, I went off to do what I usually do on Thursdays. I walked Noyzi, then did the dreaded vacuuming, noticing that right on schedule, the ants have invaded the kitchen. This happens every spring and goes on for a few weeks. I vacuumed up the ones I could see, figuring they’ll be happy in the grey bin, where there’s lots of trash.
Then, after after I vacuumed, I turned on the robot mower and broke out the weed trimmer, giving the backyard a nice sprucing up. We’ve recently had a lot of rain, so the grass grows quickly. Our new rain barrel is collecting rain that will be handy in the summer, when it stops raining so much and everything shrivels up.
After I did my chores, I took a shower, ate some lunch, and promptly bit my tongue. Ouch! Then I started watching videos by H.G. Tudor, and got a bit lost in a new game I downloaded… Such is the life of an Overeducated Housewife. It wasn’t until later, when I called up one of my banks to complain about their inability to send me texts, that I noticed that famed TV host Jerry Springer had died yesterday in his home. He was 79 years old.
I know a lot of people joked about Jerry and his bizarre daytime television show, which started off a lot more conventional before it turned into daily theater of the absurd. There was a brief period in my life when I would, on occasion, watch Jerry’s show in the afternoons. They offered a break from the mundane. But I decided I liked him when I saw him host America’s Got Talent years ago… I think it was in the summer of 2007. Below is a direct quote from me, written on Facebook in 2012.
I Jerry Springer.
See how he treats Mary? This is exactly what I mean… He was so kind to Mary, and showed genuine concern for her. It was a side of him that I found very endearing.
It was on that show that I saw a very likable side to Jerry Springer. Then later, I watched his show, and realized that he was kind of the straight man, officiating among a cast of bizarre characters who never failed to make me laugh. There was something about Jerry that struck me as kind… and he would often inject humor or reality into the weird. He didn’t take himself too seriously, and would openly tell people that if they were on his show, they might want to re-examine their life choices.
There’s something to be said for Jerry’s honesty and self-awareness. He was a good sport.
From March 2011… is watching Jerry Springer. I forgot how funny this show is.
Jerry Springer was a bit like Charro. People didn’t take him seriously because of his entertainment style. He was laughing all the way to the bank, though, and he genuinely made people smile and laugh. Yes, one could argue that his show “made fun” of people who might be regarded by some as “freaks and weirdos”, but if you watched that show for more than ten minutes, you realized that the vast majority of people who were on it were totally in on the jokes.
From 2013… Watching Jerry Springer being interviewed by Rosie O’Donnell. I must say I have an odd appreciation for Jerry.
As you can see from my Facebook quotes, Jerry got me through some times. Our brief sojourn in North Carolina could be pretty dull for me, since we lived in the middle of nowhere. It got to the point during that time period when I would look forward to 4:00PM, when the grinding, electric guitars that started Jerry’s show would crank up, and Jerry would introduce the surreal topic of the day. Then, there would be a cast of people who looked like they were doing community theater… or maybe acting out Rocky Horror Picture Show, or something.
And from November 2011… I forgot how funny Jerry Springer is.
It’s been a long time since I last saw Jerry on TV, but I did read that even though he’d been ill, he was hosting a radio show in Cincinnati. It featured folk and Americana music. As is true for almost everybody, there was a lot more to Jerry Springer than met the eye. I never got to see his show, Judge Jerry, but I’ll bet he was awesome on it.
Um… it’s “ho”, not “hoe”. A hoe is a garden tool.
I used to fantasize about going to a taping of Jerry Springer’s show… LOL!
I’d much rather watch this shit on TV than read some of the comments on news articles. At least this shit makes me laugh instead of making me want to cry.
Oh my… American TV is really… something. I give props to Jerry for keeping a straight face.
Watching these old clips have made me laugh and smile again. It’s not often that I have genuine affection for TV hosts or politicians. I truly think Jerry was one of the good guys.
I must point out that the uploader gave this video an offensive name using the so-called “r word”. The actual episode was called “Burned By Love”.
“Hamburger Helper… for the woman I love.”
Anyway, I know it was bound to happen sometime, because death happens to all of us. And not everyone can live as long as Harry Belafonte did. Jerry had a pretty good run, though… I will miss him, and always appreciate the many laughs he sent my way. May he rest in peace.
This post has to do with mass suicide. If you think you might be triggered, you might want to move on to your next Internet station.
The New York Times‘ headline said “4 Die After Falling From Balcony in Swiss Resort Town”. I was instantly curious, since I’ve heard the Swiss are even more anal retentive about safety and precision than the Germans are. Before I read the article, I said to Bill, “Someone is going to get sued into oblivion for this.” I said that because the headline made it sound like negligence was involved and I just assumed that a lovely family had plunged to their deaths because a balcony gave way. The strange truth was, this tragedy had nothing to do with a builder’s or safety inspector’s negligence. Apparently, these four people died on purpose. A fifth person remains hospitalized in serious condition.
The small group of people who died yesterday in Montreux, a beautiful resort town in western Switzerland near idyllic Lake Geneva, were not publicly identified in the article. However, the police believe they were French nationals and members of the same family, consisting of a 40 year old man, his 41 year old wife, his wife’s twin sister, and their 8 year old daughter. The couple’s 15 year old son somehow managed to survive the plunge from the seventh floor apartment from which they all apparently jumped.
When the article was published, the police were still trying to determine exactly what led up to the circumstances leading to this family’s fall from their balcony. According to the story, two police officers had knocked on the family’s door at about 7am. The officers were there to give the parents a summons involving the homeschooling of one of the children. Homeschooling is legal in Switzerland, but children who are homeschooled are still required to be routinely monitored by officials to determine their educational progress. When parents are out of touch with officials, police officers are tasked with issuing summonses. Evidently, this family was not allowing their homeschooled child to be checked.
After they knocked on the door, the police officers heard a voice from inside the apartment, asking them to identify themselves. Then, there was silence. As the officers were about to leave the building, a witness had called the police to inform them that people had fallen from a seventh floor balcony. A neighbor of the family’s stated that the family was very “discreet”. That makes me think that there was something weird going on, even before the adults apparently decided that suicide en masse was the answer to their problems.
I read some of the comments regarding this piece, and one lady posted that this story reminded her of an incident that happened in Salt Lake City Utah in 1978. Her comment is below.
This sounds like an instance in the 1970s involving a family who came to be known as “The Leaping Longos” after a mother and her seven children all jumped out of their hotel room window. It turned out that the father had killed himself the day before and their mother forced them all to jump in some weird type of suicide pact. They were practicing their own brand of religion based on the Mormon church and the father was also evading the authorities.
This family likely all jumped to their deaths as well, but only after the authorities showed up. The authorities were only trying to establish what was happening with the children due to them being home schooled but it is very likely that they had something else to hide. Fortunately one son has survived, and once he’s able to talk about what happened I’m sure the full story will unfold.
The poor kid has become an orphan and I hope he’s able to recover because it would be even more tragic if he’s permanently impaired.
I was around in 1978, but I was a young child at the time. Obviously, I had never heard of the “Leaping Longos” before I read the above comment. I decided to look them up to see if there was any information about this family. Sure enough, I found the story after a couple of minutes of looking. Here’s a link to a 1993 era article by Deseret News about the lone survivor of the Utah incident. In that case, the lone survivor was a fifteen year old girl. Like the rest of her family, Longo changed her name; in the Deseret article she is called Rachel David.
On August 3, 1978, the David family (originally identified as the Longo family) made the bizarre decision to leap from an eleventh floor balcony at the International Dune Hotel in Salt Lake City. The family had been living in the hotel for about a year, when the patriarch, 39 year old Immanuel David (originally named Charles Bruce Longo), committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Three days after the suicide, 38 year old Rebecca David and her seven children either jumped or were thrown from the balcony. The lone survivor, Rachel, spent many months in a hospital before she was placed in foster care. She was wheelchair bound in 1993, when she was interviewed by the hosts of the television tabloid show, Inside Edition.
In 1993, Rachel David still believed that her father was God and would be returning to Earth. She also said that she had willingly jumped. She also said that she had been trying to follow the suicide order and, as of 1993, had attempted to kill herself many times. Another article, circa 2000, describes the survivor as “brain damaged”. At the time that article was written, Rachel David was still living with “remnants” of the House of David near Denver, Colorado.
Below is a screenshot of a news article that was written in 1978, just after this event took place.
Freaky story… I wonder if this French family was involved in a similar cult.
And here is a broadcast news item about the 1978 Utah incident…
I can’t even imagine how horrifying this was to witness…
Why do these culty types always gravitate to the name “Immanuel”? Especially when they have ties to Mormonism? According to the news report, David was an excommunicated member of the LDS church. The father was not employed at the time of his death, although according to the video, the bill for the $95 a day was paid on time and in cash, usually with $100 bills. The news story is astonishing, as the physician is very openly talking about the surviving girl’s injuries. We didn’t have HIPAA in those days.
As I listen to this surprisingly lengthy report, I’m confused by the discrepancies in the people’s names. According to the news article, the father’s name was Charles Bruce Longo, but this news report refers to him as Bruce David Longo. And then he changed his name, and all of the names of his wife and children were changed.
As for the French family in Switzerland, slightly more news has emerged about their apparently sudden and bizarre exit from Earth. Apparently, the mother in the French family was a dentist who had worked in Paris. Her sister was an ophthalmologist. The father worked at home. The family had been living in Switzerland for some time, and had residence status. The Daily Mail offers an article with some rather salacious details omitted from the more respectable newspaper articles. Apparently, the family used incense a lot, and ordered many packages. It will be interesting to learn more about why this tragedy occurred, and if this family has anything else in common with the “Leaping Longos” of Salt Lake City.
Yesterday’s post about Tom Cruise and his nuclear meltdown over social distancing on his movie set led to more interesting discussion. One friend wrote this:
I hunted down the recording and listened to it. Fuck the message; that’s a mood-disordered, entitled shithead if I ever heard one. Maybe it’s just a bad idea to make movies until everyone can be vaccinated.
I agree with the idea of suspending movie production until more people can be vaccinated. The fact is, people are really tired of COVID-19 and they’re going to do human things, even though people have been preaching about COVID-19 precautions for months. It’s perfectly normal and natural for people to want to socialize with each other. In fact, it’s a healthy thing for most people to socialize– that is, when there isn’t a pandemic going on. I’m sure working with Tom Cruise is hard. He’s a well-known perfectionist about a lot of things, and as we noted yesterday, he’s not shy when it comes to throwing massive profane tantrums.
Another commenter assumed that maybe Cruise had finally just lost it after multiple meetings about taking COVID-19 precautions. This same commenter is irritated about people not following the pandemic rules. Because of that annoyance with people flouting the rules in general, in the commenter’s view, what Tom Cruise did is totally okay. I had written that I disagreed with that notion. I think Cruise could have made his point about maintaining social distancing without calling his employees motherfuckers and screaming at them. I think he could have done that, even if there had been “multiple meetings” and he was at the end of his patience with his crew. He certainly could have addressed this problem without flying into a rage, even if it meant counting to ten and cooling off for a few minutes first. I think most people have enough self control to contain themselves if they try. Clearly, Cruise didn’t think he needed to try to control himself.
This morning, I found this comment from the commenter who is fine with a good old fashioned hissy fit:
Perhaps I have been desensitized by having listened to Trump for the past years. Given everything he’s gotten away with saying and doing I’ll still give Tom a pass.
I had to stop and think about that for a moment. Because of Donald Trump’s completely uncivilized conduct, some folks are now “desensitized” to similarly bad conduct by other people? Based on that comment, I’m assuming that this person isn’t a Trump fan. Indeed, I remember when Joe Biden was announced the winner of the 2020 election, this person expressed delight that we might soon be rid of Trump. But now, because of Trump’s constant abuse of his position and the people who work for him, they are “desensitized”? Does this mean that Trump has now made people meaner and less civilized? Even the ones who don’t admire him and his toxic brand of leadership?
I think it’s really sad that some people are evidently willing to accept Trump style leadership in people like Tom Cruise, just because they’ve had to listen to Trump’s verbal diarrhea for the past four years. Even if Cruise had a valid point that his staff needs to practice health and safety precautions on the movie set, his message is drastically weakened when it’s delivered in the way it was. And, to be totally frank, I doubt Tom Cruise really cares that much about COVID-19, anyway. To me, he sounded like he was getting off on the power of being a movie star and Scientology power player. No one else is going to be allowed to freak out like that on his movie set. And certainly, they won’t be allowed to do it to Tom Cruise. He’s made it clear that he’s just itching to fire them.
I didn’t want to get into an argument with this person, even though I completely disagree with the notion that Cruise’s outburst is acceptable because of Donald Trump. I pointed out that listening to Tom scream like that brought back awful memories of my father’s alcoholic and PTSD inspired rages. My dad never used the language Cruise used. He hated profanity. I almost never heard him use a word stronger than “damn” or “hell”. I think it was because his own father, who was also an abusive drunk, would go into rages and use a lot of filthy language. Hearing curse words would remind my dad of those ugly rages he’d been on the receiving end of by his own father. But even though my dad didn’t curse like Tom Cruise obviously does, the insanely angry mood was still there.
I remember, when I was a child, being terrified when my dad would get extremely angry. His face would turn red. Veins would pop out. His eyes would glaze over and look piggish as he would let loose with his fury. My dad, who was much bigger and stronger than I was, would grab me and administer corporal punishment with all of his strength and energy. Afterwards, I would be left quaking in my room, hysterical, while he’d finish cooling off. Then later, he would act like nothing happened. I was expected to forgive and forget.
I always hated my father after those rages. I didn’t have respect for him for beating on me or screaming at me. I was angry and humiliated, and his outbursts made me afraid to be around him. Thankfully, I’m a decent person, and I would eventually forgive him. At least until the next episode.
Fortunately, my dad didn’t go into rages on a regular basis. It happened more times than I can count, but it wasn’t like it was a weekly or even a monthly thing. And in between those rages, he was basically a good man. As an adult, I realize that he had his own problems. He was chronically depressed and never dealt with the traumas of growing up during the Great Depression with an alcoholic father. He went to Vietnam and saw action, which caused him to suffer from PTSD for the rest of his life. He used to have nightmares that would cause him to jump out of bed while he was still sleeping. One time, he almost lost his middle finger because he punched the wall while he was sleeping and having a nightmare. He injured his finger so badly that there was talk that it might need to be amputated.
The end result of all of this is that I have a very low tolerance for verbal abuse. I can’t stand it. It brings out a visceral reaction in me. This effect has gotten worse the older I get. I used to be able to put up with being screamed at a lot more than I can now. So, in my case, being exposed to people like Donald Trump and Tom Cruise has made me more sensitive to abuse, rather than less sensitive. But I’m only one person. Maybe some people are fine with a Tom Cruise style freak out in the workplace. I am definitely not, and when people freak out on me now, they can expect to be kicked out of my life. There’s no place for that in my world. But then, I also realize that my position is a very privileged one. If I were trying to support a family, I might be forced to accept abusive behavior from a narcissistic creep like Tom Cruise or Donald Trump.
I mentioned yesterday that I think Cruise’s fit was less about COVID-19 than it was about being in control. It’s interesting to me that the commenter on my thread brought up Trump, because I think Cruise and Trump have some things in common. They are both very wealthy and famous. They are both charismatic. They both had abusive, neglectful fathers, although Trump’s dad at least stuck around when he was growing up. In the Wikipedia article about Cruise (sorry, not the best source, but I’m lazy), it says of Cruise’s father:
Cruise grew up in near poverty and had a Catholic upbringing. He later described his father as “a merchant of chaos”,[11] a “bully”, and a “coward” who beat his children. He elaborated, “[My father] was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life—how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, ‘There’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.'”[11]
I find it very interesting that Cruise supposedly said those things about his dad. I see the very same tendencies in him. I have read about him being very generous and heroic in some situations, and that makes him look like a great guy. I’ve seen news articles about how Cruise has a tendency to sweep his love interests off their feet and shower his children with luxurious gifts and outings. But then, when Cruise gets pissed off, I read other accounts of the hellish fury he delivers on those who land on his shit list. If you’ve ever studied the behavior of abusers, you find that this is a very familiar pattern.
Actress Leah Remini, who knows Cruise personally, and was a Scientologist and a member of the Sea Org, says that Cruise’s tantrum was for publicity reasons only. She’s quoted in US Magazine:
“Tom’s reaction that was released yesterday shows his true personality. He is an abusive person,” the King of Queens alum said of Cruise, who is a high-profile member of the Church of Scientology. “I witnessed it, I’ve been a recipient of it on a small level … This is the real Tom.”
“Tom does not care about the families of his crew; this is all for publicity,” Remini, a former Scientologist, continued. “Tom does not believe in family values. I mean, how anyone is falling for this is just mindblowing. I would bet that Tom had this rant written for him and had his Scientology assistant record and release it. Hearing a rich actor with enormous power address his crew in this way is a sign of weakness and a deeply troubled person. This is not just a rant of another a–hole actor. Tom Cruise pretending that he cares is why a few have called him out. They know this is a publicity stunt, they know what Tom really is and what Tom really believes.”
Yes… you see, it kind of blows my mind that Tom Cruise would allow anyone on set to have a recording device handy. Seems to me, he’d want his staff to sign non-disclosure agreements and put their phones away for safe keeping. But either way, someone knew that he was going to melt down and was ready to record him. Whether or not he orchestrated this rant in an attempt to make himself look “caring” to the masses, or someone snuck in a recorder and taped him unawares, it says something that he was recorded going off like this. Either he’s done this as a stunt, or he’s abusive often enough that someone was fully prepared to tape his next meltdown. They knew it was going to happen.
While many people are siding with Tom, mainly because so many of us are so sick of the pandemic lifestyle, and many more of us are feeling sanctimonious these days, the fact remains that Cruise’s meltdown was totally inappropriate. If he had been going off about anything besides COVID-19, would people think this was okay? How about if he threatened bodily harm because he was enraged? Imagine how he must behave behind closed doors.
“No one needs to be ‘addressed’ by Tom about safety codes. There are producers who could have and should have handled the situation privately and professionally. What more likely happened was, two crew members who were in the same zone were talking to each other and Tom saw this as an opportunity to appear as the epitome of strength; of a leader who is taking this pandemic very seriously,” she added. “This behavior is not normal or appropriate. No one can respond to his outburst without being fired.”
Exactly. There are other people on that set who can deal with the crew members, and they would have handled the situation professionally and, hopefully, privately. It’s not really Tom’s job to go off on crew members like that. He’s just trying to look “heroic” and doing so in the most bullying manner possible. I think his stunt has backfired, though, because although a lot of people are fully supporting him, other people are seeing his behavior for what it really is– pure verbal abuse and narcissistic rage. It was completely unprofessional and inappropriate.
Still, I am baffled by the notion that Donald Trump has “desensitized” people to this kind of behavior and some of us are willing to let it slide because of our feckless soon to be former president. Donald Trump is not someone I want to emulate in any way, shape, or form. I would not praise someone else for emulating Trump’s abusive style of leadership. I would not excuse someone for behaving the way Tom Cruise did because I’ve been “desensitized” by abusive behavior from an authority figure like Trump or my father. Having studied human communication, as well as having taken a few courses in counseling and undergone it myself, I would never condone the screaming approach as a means of effecting change. All it does is cause people to shut down and become depressed or anxious. And it just makes Cruise out to be a tyrannical bully.
Bill and I were super busy yesterday, so I didn’t have time to blog. However, I did find some time to discover new personalities on YouTube. I’ve written about Jim Bakker before– if you were around in the 1980s, you might remember him as one of the leaders of the PTL channel (Praise the Lord). He and his late ex wife, Tammy Faye, were in huge legal trouble for embezzling money from their ministry to pay for an extravagant lifestyle. Jim Bakker was later sentenced to 45 years in prison, but only ended up doing almost five.
Bakker was also known for his sexual dalliances with Jessica Hahn, a church secretary. He paid her $279,000 to keep silent about their shenanigans, but the truth eventually came out.
I was a teenager when all of that was happening. I grew up in the Tidewater area of Virginia, not too far from the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Portsmouth headquarters. Jim and Tammy Faye got their start at CBN, which is where Pat Robertson reigns supreme. I don’t remember following the story of the scandal closely when it was going on, but I do remember it well. It was national news.
Years later, I read and reviewed an excellent and comprehensive book about Jim Bakker. In 1989, author Charles E. Shepard published Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry. The book is out of print now, or at least it was when I managed to score a used copy of it. Although it took a long time to finish reading it, I found Forgiven a very juicy read. I was left fascinated by televangelists like Jim Bakker.
A few months ago, I wrote a post about how Jim Bakker and his wife, Lori, are now hosting a new show. They are selling shelf stable buckets of food for the end times. Bakker cries about how the world is going to end soon and there won’t be enough food. You can protect your family by buying his overpriced buckets of slop for your food storage. They supposedly last for 25 years.
Thanks to YouTube, all of this is easily discovered online… along with some true comedy gold. Yesterday, I discovered two guys who have a show called Good Mythical Morning. Rhett and Link bravely “tasted” the apocalypse era food so you don’t have to. Behold this…
These guys are HILARIOUS! But then, so is Jim Bakker… for all the wrong reasons.
Jim Bakker is just fucking nuts, but people are still watching his tripe. Sadly, some people actually believe what he says. Someone is bankrolling his show, after all. I haven’t sat through a whole episode yet, because it mostly seems to be about his end times prophecies and selling this bucketed slop. You can use the buckets as tables, too. Seriously, they show you how to do this. How thrifty!
They follow up with another funny video of their taste test of apocalyptic milk… If this is what we have to look forward to after the apocalypse, why bother trying to survive? Isn’t it the goal of Christians to go “home” to Jesus?
These guys cracked me up so much yesterday. They seem to enjoy the same kind of juvenile humor I never managed to grow out of. Case in point, they started off this video with a ten word story… “Well, I just went number two in a large bucket.” Ha ha ha… maybe they rehearsed that… but it seems spontaneous. And I dig ten word stories about taking a crap.
I think my favorite part of these videos is when they show Bakker tasting this crap in front of everyone. You can watch Bakker almost choke on faux potato soup as he tries to convince everyone how delicious it is. When you consider how convincing Bakker must have been in the 80s when he managed to separate so many gullible people from their rare and hard earned dollars, you know that trying to look like he’s enjoying the slop he’s selling must have been super difficult. In fairness, these guys don’t totally diss the slop. They say it’s kind of like what you’d eat on a camping trip.
Anyway… I see Rhett and Link do a lot of food reviewing. Some of the stuff they try is truly bizarre and disgusting. I love that they taste tested Jim Bakker’s apocalyptic slop, though. My liberal friends have been posting about Bakker a lot lately, since he’s been putting out all kinds of bullshit about the end times and how Christians are soon going to start killing each other. In fact, I think I was even prompted to watch this silliness because I recently read an equally silly story about how Bakker thinks “Christians will die” if Trump loses in 2020. He’s not the only one who has made such ridiculous declarations about the slaughter of Christians. Rick Wiles, host of TruNews, has also made stupid comments about this.
Guys like Bakker and Wiles prey on the dull and dim.
The prospect of another four years with Trump in charge is terrifying to me. I’m glad Good Mythical Morning is around to make me laugh as I try not to ponder the United States’s slide into complete lunacy at the hands of religious wingnuts and narcissistic sociopaths like Trump.
After watching Jim Bakker’s slop taste test, I think you should explore Vic Berger’s hilarious videos, comically edited to show everyone how nuts Bakker and his ilk are…
After you eat the slop, you can crap in the bucket. They even say so! And as Bakker talks about people starving, I look at the people in the audience, almost none of whom look like they’re ever going to be in danger of starving.
I know what I’d like to do with Bakker’s particular brand of doo doo… At least they hire decent musicians, even if their songs are ridiculous.
Wow… who needs Netflix when you can watch this shit?
Standard
Loading Comments...
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
Jerry Springer.
