Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504050016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WALTER GOODMAN NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Jenny Jones took the inconvenience of having one guest charged with killing another as an opportunity to tell her audience what a shock this ``tragic incident'' was to her and what a hard time she and her associates were having getting through it. There she was, like one of her guests, reaching out for the sort of counseling that the performers on such shows are often given, like tips to barroom strippers.
The murder, which ignited an argument over whether blame should be leveled at trash television or at unwholesome attitudes toward homosexuals, also had the minor effect of turning the attention of professional viewers to a hot television phenomenon. Daytime shows like Jones's, Ricki Lake's, Richard Bey's and Jerry Springer's have caught on, making ``Oprah'' seem prissy, ``Donahue'' seem highbrow and ``Geraldo'' seem restrained.
In one Richard Bey outing last week, I met Karen, who admitted that she had offered her husband to Donna as a sleeping companion; Carolyn, who said her brother had slept with her boyfriend, and Geena, who said she had slept with an old friend's fiance (a loosely used word in these precincts). Geena presented her old friend with a birthday cake on stage before confessing to her, and got the cake back in her face. The audience whooped.
Such are the high points of shows that solicit young women who have slept with other people's boyfriends to spill it all on camera to the injured parties. Sometimes there are tears. More often there is hollering, with the rougher epithets bleeped out - a gesture at puritanism amid the prurience.
When the decibel level makes it difficult to understand the insults being exchanged, Springer may encourage ``a little bit of civility here.'' But be assured that is the last thing anyone wants. What host, sponsors and audience want are moments like the one on Richard Bey's show when Anita showed Lisa a picture of her boyfriend, Jose, in bed with another woman, maybe Tasha. Bey puts his arm comfortingly around the distraught Lisa. Smarm, anyone?
And bidding farewell to Margaret, who has two children by Sherman, who may also have made Donna pregnant and may have slept with Donna's older sister Tanya, who may have threatened to shoot Margaret, Jenny Jones says, ``I hope it works out for you.''
Psychologists and social workers come on with advice for clean living, the way tenors used to deliver ``Danny Boy'' between the acts at burlesque houses. ``Take it off!'' urge the hosts, and then they moralize. Jerry Springer intones: ``You don't ever hit a woman! Ever!'' Richard Bey instructs some girls who say they started sleeping around at the age of 12 or so to behave properly. He admonishes laughers in the audience: ``It isn't funny! It isn't funny!''
It's funny.
As young couples and in-laws scream at each other over money, Ricki Lake says: ``I think we're making some progress. You're getting things out. You're communicating.'' Shades of Sally Jessy Raphael.
Why would anyone answer the shows' invitations to disclose intimacies, real or virtual, to the cameras? That's what Richard Bey asks Selena, who has come to the studio to tell her best friend Roshanda, who is pregnant by Mark, that she (Selena) ``used to mess with Mark.'' Our host asks, ``Why did you choose to tell her here,'' just the way Ricki Lake asks Heidi why she decided to wait till the cameras were running to tell her best and pregnant friend, Maire that she (Heidi) is also bearing a child by Maire's boyfriend.
But why not? How many other opportunities do these under-schooled, overly experienced yet painfully innocent girls and women get to dress up and show off, to publicize their appeal to men on the sort of program they and all their friends spend their days watching? Maybe the counseling is not entirely hypocritical or worthless. What more direct way is there to reach such a clientele than with trash television?
And why should the men, without much in the way of education or prospects, resist parading their ability to impregnate two or more women at the same time? Anyhow, who else is offering them a hotel stay in Chicago?
So it's party time. Ricki Lake prods the audience by saying of one of her distraught guests, ``And we're here for her, right?'' You can count on a howling affirmation of solidarity. They are into the show, at once voyeurs and judges, oohing at the confessions, then in their 30-second star turns on camera, remonstrating with the confessors.
When the language has to be bleeped (as when the audience gives forth at Chris, who claims he cheated on Kristen with 94 women, 8 of whom he made pregnant), Jenny Jones says, ``We have to remind you that this is daytime TV.''
As if anybody could forget.
by CNB