Though I wouldn’t call it a great discovery, by any means… Every few months, I go through a period of insomnia that lasts a few days. I don’t know why this happens, but it starts when I stay up too late a few nights in a row, waiting for my kids to go to bed and then having too much fun to go to bed myself. Then for some reason, I start waking up early in the morning and am unable to fall back asleep, and the more tired I get, the less easy it is for me to sleep and the cycle continues. So anyway, a few weeks ago, during one of these bouts of insomnia, I was flipping channels and I came across the Steve Wilkos show.
In case you don’t know (and I hope you don’t) Steve Wilkos is best known for being the main bodyguard on the Jerry Springer show – a talk show that aired in the ’90’s that was a total raunch fest. The show pushed the limits of television at the time and helped to give talk shows an even worse reputation than they already had. Nearly every episode of the Jerry Springer show contained bleeped-out profanity, guests taking their clothes off (censored for tv thank goodness) and brawling. It was a disgusting example of junk tv and helped give birth to the term “trailer trash”. And Steve Wilkos had a big part to play. As the main bodyguard, he would have to break up the fights, often climbing in between scantly-clad (if that) guests as they tried to duke it out on the stage. As his popularity rose, the audience would often chant Steve’s name as he broke up the fights with his trademark smirk and chrome dome. And how do I know this? Well, I was a college student at the time, and I guess I’ll reluctantly admit to being present as some of my friends would get a big kick out of this show and watch it in their dorm room.
So anyway, the other night, it was really late, and I thought I must be hallucinating when I came across Steve the bodyguard from the Jerry Springer show hosting his own talk show here in 2009. And it didn’t seem to be like the Jerry Springer show… no fights, no swearing, no nudity… Just Steve, the ex-Chicago cop complete with his thick Chicago accent, trying to work out life’s problems for his “lucky” guests… He doesn’t seem very natural in front of the camera, and I don’t know whose idea it was to give this guy his own show… What is this (tv) world coming to? Check it out for yourself, if you dare! And, just for kicks, here is a link to some classic Jerry Springer moments someone put up on youtube; I’m NOT embedding that garbage on my blog – you can just click on the link if you really want to see it. Where has the former-mayor-of-Cincinnatti-who-wrote- a-check-to-a-prostitute-and-got-caught been these days anyway?
That’s a good question, but I think MOST “trash talk” has now been moved to the wee hours or thankfully removed (at least in this area).
Can’t say I’ve ever discovered much on late night TV during my periods of Insomnia.