Priest Is Devoted to TV Exorcism of Jerry Springer

Father Michael Pfleger has taken on the devil in many forms in nearly two decades of doing “God’s work” as an activist priest with a needy inner-city parish. He has tilted against crack dealers and corner liquor stores, television news teams that sensationalize urban crime and cigarette billboards that target teenagers.

But when he saw TV talk-show host Jerry Springer on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine costumed as Lucifer with red horns and a forked tail, he knew he was on point in his latest moral crusade.

“He’s raised the bathtub ring to a new level,” said Pfleger, who is using the threat of a boycott against Springer’s network broadcasters to bring them to negotiations over the content of the raucous show.

After a round of recent talks with Springer’s Los Angeles-based syndicator, Studios USA Television Distribution, Pfleger emerged with a promise that the firm would move to tone down the show’s frequent fights in future broadcasts. Pfleger’s boycott threats also played a role last month in persuading some Chicago-area advertisers to cancel their commercials and in moving Springer’s NBC affiliate here to drop the show, which is being picked up by a Fox network affiliate.

How effective Pfleger will ultimately be in muting the brawling on Springer’s stage is yet to be seen. The studio has not spelled out how it would “minimize further altercations among guests,” as stated in an April 3 announcement.

Springer, who has reportedly said he will not let a priest dictate the content of his show, has publicly refused to tone down his broadcasts. And despite Pfleger’s demand that all violence must be edited out starting June 8, the priest said Springer’s executive producer told him that the only changes would consist of moving guests’ chairs farther apart and adding more security guards.

“It’s all up to the syndicators now,” Pfleger said.

How Pfleger came to take up a national crusade against Springer after years of guerrilla tactics against neighborhood scourges is a matter of conscience, the priest says. Springer’s warring guests, he says, “legitimize violence as normal behavior.”

Pfleger’s longtime critics in Chicago say the priest’s determination to confront Springer is a classic display of his love of the limelight. “Face it, he’s a publicity hound,” says Jerry Rosen, who has long battled with Pfleger in his role as director of the Illinois Liquor Store Assn.

Pfleger, 48, has been drawn toward social action since he first joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches for housing integration in Chicago and Cicero in the mid-1960s. He has been pastor for 17 years at St. Sabina’s on the South Side.

Pfleger’s parishioners follow him loyally to every protest, wearing their Sunday best after church to the demonstrations he leads. Pfleger returns their loyalty, even adopting their ghetto patois as his own.

Pfleger was so preoccupied with local issues like liquor store proliferation that he failed to notice America’s growing fascination with Springer until late last year. Not until he caught a few minutes of the broadcast while visiting a friend in the hospital did Pfleger decide to take action. To the priest, who had a long history of tackling corporate interests that target teenagers, the Springer show was a natural extension of that perceived peril--a television program that “markets violence to kids.”

Pfleger had savaged Chicago news broadcasts years ago for their obsession with crime coverage. “Springer does a variation of the same theme--all conflict is resolved,” Pfleger said, “not by talking, but by swinging your fists.” Unavailable to comment on his priestly adversary, Springer clings to the 1st Amendment--and dismisses his show’s effects by saying it is “just entertainment.”

The muscle behind Pfleger’s threat is a coalition of churches and other Chicago-area religious groups primed to picket Springer’s studio here if a boycott is called. Pfleger has organized in Los Angeles in recent weeks to pressure Studios USA there if the show’s dust-ups continue.

Pfleger realizes he runs the risk of being dismissed as a fringe ideologue, just as right-wing minister Donald Wildmon has after years of trying to sanitize Hollywood TV fare. The difference between the two, Pfleger insists, is that he is not trying to build a “political or a religious base”--goals the priest says motivate some prominent Christian activists.

“I’d be perfectly happy,” he said, “to go back and deal with issues that only affect my parish. The problem is, Jerry Springer affects the kids in my parish just as much as he affects kids in the rest of the country. As long as they show fights and kids keep watching, I’ll be on his case.”