Jerry Springer, who can claim credit for being the initiator of the lowest common denominator tabloid television with his eponymous show that ran for nearly three decades, has died. A controversial show of exploitation and moral panic, ‘a relentless orgy of humanity’s worst impulses’, ‘bear-baiting’ and ‘mob rule’ it lowered the tone of television and arguably set the stage for where we are now, politically and culturally. “Without him plumbing new social depths in the 1990s, we might never have witnessed shows such as Big Brother, or Pop Idol, or Jersey Shore, which revolve around allowing the sofa-dwelling masses to sneer at the flotsam of society.”
Not that he was happy with his trailblazing role into humiliation television but he took the money and ploughed on anyway.
He was born 13 February 1944 11.45pm (from memory) in London in an underground shelter during a bombing raid and moved with his family to the USA when he was 4. He started his career in politics, then moved into television and found his niche.
He had a well-tied together, lucky and influential chart with a communicative Air Grand Trine of an Aquarius Sun trine Saturn trine a Libra Moon, formed into a Kite by Sun opposition a 10th house successful Jupiter. He also had a legend-in-his-lifetime Pluto in his career 10th conjunct the spirit-of-the-age North Node (like Len Goodman born two months later.)
Springer’s Pluto dragged him down into the depths perhaps because it sat on the midpoint of a trine between an 8th house Uranus Mars and a 12th house Neptune. He revelled in the dark side. His Venus in Capricorn was on the focal point of a Yod inconjunct Jupiter and Saturn which would also make him adept at shifting the culture.
His Saturn in Gemini would give him a serious side and his Libra Moon must have been appalled at the sorry social spectacles he rabble-roused. A complicated man.
Fox’s Tucker Carlson and CNN’s Don Lemon were kings of respective television castles until summarily ejected for different reasons this week.
The abrupt dismissal of pro-Trumper Carlson, Murdoch’s biggest star, stunned media and political circles, although his private messages unearthed by Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit including criticisms of Fox executives and anchors did suggest there would be fallout. Insiders painted a picture of him as a star whose ego had led him to believe he was untouchable.
“Anytime somebody starts acting like they’re bigger than the platform, they go,” said a former senior News Corp executive: “There’s many things you can do in News Corp and Fox, but you can’t make Rupert look bad.”
Carlson, 16 May 1969 10.07 am San Francisco, CA, is a heavyweight New Moon in late Taurus opposition Neptune and trine a super-confident Pluto Jupiter South Node in Virgo. He also has an outspoken Mars in Sagittarius in his performing 5th in a ruthless square to Pluto.
His Jupiter Pluto would give him a sense of being above the rules and regulations that restrict ordinary mortals. Interestingly it recurs in his relationship chart with Rupert Murdoch with a composite Jupiter Pluto at 18/20 degrees Leo. That is classic power-couple aspect which can raise both to great success when they pull together as one. But inevitably the energy gets turned inward into the relationship itself and becomes divisive and there follows a oneupmanship struggle for the upper hand at which point it becomes bitterly hostile. Tr Uranus is elbowing that Jupiter Pluto exactly now and in coming weeks.
Carlson’s Solar Return over this period from May 2022 onwards has Pluto on the Midheaven which hints at a career blockage of considerable proportion along with reputational damage. Plus Uranus on the 18 degree Ascendant for an abrupt change of image.
High flying presenters who are toppled rarely climb back to the same heights and he will have a disappointing and discouraging run ahead with tr Neptune opposition his Jupiter this year and tr Pluto square his 10th house Saturn in 2024/25. Though he does have Jupiter through his 10th this year till next spring and has Jupiter on his Solar Return Midheaven for this coming year – so he may grab onto a few breadcrumbs. A Russian station has suggested he should run for president.
Don Lemon, 1 March 1966 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, no birth time, was fired after 17 years with CNN for crass comments about Nikki Haley not being in her prime, with falling ratings for his show not helping his chances either.
He has a stellium in Pisces with Sun conjunct Saturn which in turn is conjunct Mars and Mercury opposition Pluto Uranus in Virgo square Jupiter (Moon) in Gemini – hard-edged, hard-working, unpredictable, chaotic and lucky with a strong Jupiter. His Mars Mercury in Pisces are in a showbizzy trine to Neptune and South Node in Scorpio. He’ll be a whirlwind of a personality, short-fused and at times overly forceful.
Tr Saturn in Pisces aiming for his Second Saturn Return in 2024 won’t do much to boost his confidence and luck in 2024/25 as it pours a bucket of cold reality over his central T square. But he’ll bounce again come 2026/27.
All that strikes me as similar about the pair of them is late degree Taurus with Carlson’s Sun being conjunct Algol as is Lemon’s North Node.
Maybe just maybe with Carlson toppling there are faint signs of the ending of an unfortunate era of lies and misinformation. Though it’ll take more than his exit to wipe the board clean.
Harry Belafonte, singer, actor and civil rights activist, friend of Martin Luther King, Paul Robeson and Sydney Poitier, has died aged 96. One of the trailblazers in the American music and movie scene, he had an easy charm along with a driving determination to see justice done not only in the USA but also in Africa and elsewhere.
He was born 1 March 1927 in New York to Jamaican-born parents. According to wiki his mother had a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father; and his father a Black American mother and a Dutch-Jewish father of Sephardic descent. He spent his middle childhood with a grandmother in Jamaica, served in the navy, became a janitor’s assistant and was given as a tip, tickets to the American Negro Theater which opened his eyes to a whole new world. Acting classes along with Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur and Sydney Poitier honed his talent.
His first single “Matilda” and breakthrough album Calypso in the early 1950s also brought him musical acclaim. In the 1960s he was active in the civil right movement, later recalling that “Paul Robeson had been my first great formative influence; you might say he gave me my backbone. Martin King was the second; he nourished my soul.”
He had an enthusiastic, lucky, expansive, musical Sun Jupiter in Pisces in his 10th trine Pluto so a successful career was a given. That Sun Jupiter squared onto a disciplined, tough-minded and angry Mars opposition Saturn giving him a focus for his burning sense of unfairness. Plus all of those planets are encapsulated in a talented Half Grand Sextile of Mars opposition Saturn, sextile Venus in Aries sextile a far-travelled 9th house Aquarius Moon. His Mercury in Pisces is conjunct an outspoken Uranus and inconjunct an idealistic and self-sacrificing Neptune in the 4th.
Len Goodman, who has sadly just died of bone cancer, is another success from unlikely beginnings story. Born into a poor London East End family who scraped a living selling vegetables off a barrow he was told by his headmaster he was never going to amount to anything – “You’re a failure in class. You’ll be a failure in life.” Leaving school early he became a welder, injured his foot at football, took up dancing on medical advice, married his dance teacher’s daughter and set up a dance school which flourished as Grease and Saturday Night Fever struck a chord. By chance aged 60 he was recruited on as a judge to BBC TV’s Strictly Coming Dancing and his engaging personality and cheerful patter made him a hit on the US version as well. For more than a decade, he crossed the Atlantic twice a week – appearing as head judge on both shows simultaneously.
In the first show, he trotted out one of his grandad’s favourite phrases, “all sausage, and no sizzle”, and quickly settled in. The audience loved his pithy observations. “It’s a lovely rise and fall, up and down like a bride’s nightie,” he told one nervous contestant. “You’re just like a trifle – fruity at the top but a little bit spongy down below,” he informed another.
“You floated across that floor like butter on a crumpet.”
“It was like watching a stork who’d been struck by lightning.”
“You were like a chess master – you plotted your way around that floor. That was a mango of a tango. Delicious.”
Born in Kent, on 25 April 1944, he was a Sun Taurus in a determined square to Pluto and North Node in ‘leadership’ Leo with his Pluto North Node further emphasized being on the focal point of a trine of Neptune trine Uranus (Moon in Gemini). Although much of his life story appears to be a series of lucky happenstance, he was ambitious and determined. What gave him the gift of the gab and easy charm was his Jupiter in flamboyant Leo square Mercury and trine Venus in Aries.
He did have Mars in Cancer which can be excitable but it was sparsely aspected giving him dynamic vitality. His Saturn in Gemini was sextile Venus on one side and Jupiter on the other giving him common sense and good organization as well as a light-hearted approach to life. By all accounts a lovely man.
His get-it-together and creating-a-solid-lifestyle for himself 5th harmonic was strongly aspected with a highlighted Jupiter.
Joe Biden has announced his intention to run for the 2024 election despite 70% of the voters wishing he would not and that includes over 50% of Democrats polled.
What he has to contend with between now and November 2024 is a hugely disruptive run of tr Uranus opposing his Sun/Mars midpoint from late this May on and off into early 2024, then opposition his Mercury from this June; with tr Uranus opposition his Sun and Venus in Scorpio from August/September 2024 onwards and his Solar Arc Uranus square his Sun in fall 2024 – and that is a whole lot of jolts, jangles, shocks and sudden surprises. He’ll also wade through a disastrous few weeks mid this November to mid December but that may just be the usual political chaos or flu.
He does have tr Pluto opposition his Jupiter/Pluto midpoint from early 2024 on and off till late 2025 which will rev up his confidence for a determined push. But that apart he will be bedevilled by more tr Uranus in a disastrous square to his Mars/Saturn midpoint in July 2024 – which is just before the national convention.
Over the election itself he has tr Pluto returning to square his Sun/Neptune midpoint which is running throughout this year and next which is associated with a tragic deception or illusion and great confusion. Plus he has through 2024 tr Pluto trine his 10th house Neptune which again hints at lack of clear thinking and good judgement.
It will be a high-tension, bad-tempered and acutely frustrating election with a Mars opposition Pluto in place – which might suggest an aggravated electorate facing two candidates, neither of whom appeals to them.
Suzanne Heywood has a life story to marvel at, overcoming extreme parental neglect of her education and safety, to self-teach herself from correspondence courses and make it through to Oxford and Cambridge, thence onto a high level career along with a happy marriage and three children. Aged seven she was pulled away from a normal existence by her father’s dream of sailing round the world – which turned into a dangerous ten year odyssey. He wanted to be a hero and her mother wanted to be with him – the two children were an afterthought and an inconvenience.
Homeschooling by her increasingly hostile mother never happened and Suzanne and her younger brother’s complaints about being scared, homesick and hungry were brushed aside. Eventually they were dumped in New Zealand when Suzanne was 16 without money or support systems and she phoned Childline in desperation. Her father did return and paid their trip back to the UK. Eventually she married Jeremy Heywood, the former Cabinet Secretary, who tragically died in his late fifties of cancer.
She was born 25 February 1969 and is a Sun Pisces square Mars in Sagittarius and Neptune in Scorpio, inconjunct Uranus Jupiter – which manages to encapsulate oceanic and adventurous experiences at the behest of an over forceful father with his head in the clouds. But what marks her chart out as resilient in the extreme is a forced-to-be-self-reliant Saturn in Aries conjunct Venus on the focal point of a yod to Pluto sextile Neptune (Mars). Such a Saturn demands great sacrifice and resourcefulness as well as maturity to get the better end of it.
After much scrabbling around I found her parents’ birth dates from a company check. Her father, Gordon Cook, 10 July 1938, is a Sun Mars in Cancer square Saturn in Aries, which is hard, unsentimental, verging towards cruelty. He also has Uranus in Taurus trine Neptune sextile his Sun Mars, so would be a go-getter, keen on adventure and not always sensible or open to argument. His Jupiter is conjunct Suzanne’s Sun so there would be a sliver of good feeling.
Her mother, Mary Cook, died in 2016 though not before threatening to wreck her husband Jeremy Heywood’s career if Suzanne wrote her childhood memoirs. It also emerged along the way that mother was the instigator of the NZ dumping exercise since she couldn’t stand her teenage daughter. Born 20 August 1941, she was a Sun Leo square Saturn in Taurus conjunct Uranus. Her Mars in Aries was conjunct Suzanne’s afflicted Saturn Venus for an unfriendly chemistry with mom’s Saturn Uranus opposition Suzanne’s Neptune Mars. Star-crossed, a bad mix and impossible on the closeted existence on a sailing boat.
When the ill-fated voyage ‘of privilege’ as her parents described it, started in 1976, tr Saturn in Cancer was square Suzanne’s Solar Arc Saturn Venus for sadness and loss; tr Uranus was trine her Sun for change; and tr Pluto was conjunct her Solar Arc Uranus Jupiter, upheaval and adventure. When she was finally free ten years later tr Uranus was square her Pluto for a radical upheaval; tr Uranus was trine her Saturn for positive change and her Sun and Moon were both being challenged by tr Saturn and Pluto as she cut the parental chains that bound.
Horrifying and uplifting at the same time. The resilience of the human spirit – in some lives – is astonishing.
Diane Abbott has been suspended as a Labour MP because of a letter she wrote suggesting that while white people can suffer prejudice, they are not subject to racism. “In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.”
Grovelling apologies followed with an investigation underway in a party already hyper-sensitive to accusations of anti-Semitism.
She was born 27 September 1953 with Jamaican immigrant parents, grammar-school educated, then Cambridge University, worked for the Civil Service and Civil Liberties before moving into television as a reporter and thence onto Ken Livingstone in the Greater London Council. In 1987 she became the first black woman MP.
She has won acclaim for speeches and initiatives though she also has form for making intemperate remarks. For example – “blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls” were unsuitable as nurses because they had “never met a black person before”.
“White people love playing ‘divide and rule’. After complaints she claimed her tweet was referring to the history of the British Empire. Nick Clegg called her comments a “stupid and crass generalisation”.
In 1984 she criticised the Unionist population of Northern Ireland as an “enclave of white supremacist ideology comparable to white settlers in Zimbabwe. “Ireland is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”
After the invasion of Ukraine, she signed a statement by the Stop the War Coalition that questioned the legitimacy of NATO and accused the military alliance of “eastward expansion”.
She has talent, is an influencer though also prone to scandals e.g sending her son to a private school despite criticizing others for doing the same.
Long ago she had a fling with Jeremy Corbyn whose policies she supports and she shares with him an ideologue’s Airy chart, She has a Libra Sun trine North Node in ‘crusading’ Aquarius trine (probably) a Gemini Moon. She also has Jupiter in Gemini trine Mercury, Neptune, Saturn in Libra sextiling on to Pluto. Plus a passionately enthusiastic Mars Venus in Virgo which does not sit happily with Kier Starmer’s Sun Pluto in Virgo. Her Uranus which squares her Mercury will make her outspoken, blurting out before she thinks. Uranus square Saturn does not practice what it preaches.
Two reasons why she is interesting – one is the heavy Air in her chart, like Corbyn, which can lead to entrenched ideas and theory overtaking common sense.
The other is —- and I tread lightly here —- she exemplifies a very normal human reaction to her own experience, in feeling that it is worse than any other injustice which others may have experienced. It is a problem nowadays with identity politics where everyone is clamouring to be heard for the undoubted pain their specific condition or history has caused them.
But suffering isn’t a competition. It was a problem with Jewish people bringing the world’s attention to the Holocaust who initially were unwilling to accept that any other genocide came anywhere near the level of evil.
Some of the arguments were chewed over in the comments of the Slavery reparations post on April 3 2023 below. And in many ways it is only going to throw up more tensions in future. As an outsider in this particular situation – either slavery or the Holocaust – any comments I might make trying to put them into a wider perspective sounds uncaring and arrogant.
And yet we all have to live in this world without drowning in a sea of misery or wracked by endless survivor guilt (from being born privileged.) I am constantly drawn back to Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death) “Man lives by lying to himself about himself and about his world. * The individual has to protect himself against the world, and he can do this only as any other animal would; by narrowing down the world, shutting off experience, developing an obliviousness to the terrors of the world and to his own anxieties…..* We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives.”
Shutting out the myriad horrors and suffering in the world apart from our own isn’t uncaring – it’s a survival mechanism. Which won’t make it feel better to those who are demanding attention for their pain, but it might make it understandable.
The other thought from Dori Laub, the Rumanian-American psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust victims and writes about the difficulty of witnessing other people’s agonies. “The fight against the obliteration of the story could only be won at the cost of the obliteration of the audience.” Too terrible to hear. That struck a resonance for me in working in the child abuse field and being outraged that the world at large just shut their ears and eyes. Distance has made me more resigned and realistic about what people in general can handle.
I don’t know what the answer is except that sorting out a better future seems more productive than dwelling on a past that can’t be changed. A problem for Pluto in Aquarius to tackle.
Australian comedian and satirist Barry Humphries, best known for his gladioli-throwing character Dame Edna Everage, has died aged 89. Described as one of the greatest raconteurs of his age, his achievements as a writer, painter, actor and scholar were overshadowed by his shrill toned and sequined global superstar alter-ego, spreading her homespun philosophy, who was initially based on his mother.
He was born 17 February 1934 6.30 am Melbourne, AU, and started inventing fictional characters from an early age, spending hours in his parent’s back garden dressing up in various costumes.
Despite his talent and great success he did have his demons, being severely afflicted by long periods of alcoholism and depression. A reviewer commented: “It may be that the regular transformation into Edna or Les was partly an act of exorcism. He once confessed to experiencing on stage the strange sensation of “standing on one side watching Edna doing appalling things to the audience”. His other alternative identity was a lecherous, drunken, foul-mouthed Sir Les Paterson. He also created the character, Barry McKenzie, the boorish, sexist, arrogant Australian, who appeared in a comic strip he wrote for Private Eye.
He had an Aquarius stellium in his creative and hidden 12th house ranging from Venus, North Node, Saturn to Sun. A showbizzy, publicity attracting Mars Mercury in Pisces in his 1st opposed Neptune in his 7th house of relationships. And a turbo-charged and lucky Jupiter opposition Uranus was square an attention-demanding Pluto in his performing and entertaining 5th house. A mix of reclusive and over-the-top diva. His Aries Moon was sparsely aspected being only sextile Venus.
Coming to terms with the unconscious is always a necessity with a strong 12th house and it may well be his inner fragility was what spurred his need to create a false identity. Hiding behind a false persona was part of his way of coping.
He also, which may be relevant, had his Mercury conjunct his Sun/Moon midpoint which Ebertin describes as: ‘one’s attitude and thoughts to the male and female principles.’ So he clearly was ambivalent about who he wanted to be. His uncommitted Neptune in the 7th would account for multiple marriages.
Intriguingly he had a marked 13th harmonic, as did Peter Sellers, which is associated with genius and breakthrough but is also ascribed by one astrologer with confusion about identity. Barry Humphries also had an even more noteworthy creative 7th harmonic and 5th – as well as the global influence 22H and leaving a legacy 17H.
Dominic Raab, UK Deputy Prime Minister, has been forced to resign after an inquiry found he had acted with “unreasonably and persistently aggressive conduct” in one of his previous posts. Despite accepting that he had to go, in a typically bull-necked response he attacked the inquiry as “Kafkaesque”, suggested certain civil servants were snowflakes who couldn’t stand the pressure and sulkily stomped off.
He does have form for bull-dozing around, once describing some feminists as “obnoxious bigots” and claiming men were getting “a raw deal”. More recently he was branded “offensive” after saying “the typical user of a food bank is not someone that’s languishing in poverty; it’s someone who has a cash flow problem”.
He was a fervent Brexiteer, supported Boris Johnson, who made him foreign secretary and the government’s de-facto second-in-command. As Brexit secretary, he came under fire for saying he “hadn’t quite understood” how reliant UK trade in goods was on the Dover-Calais crossing. As foreign secretary, he was heavily criticized for his handling of the aftermath of the fall of Afghanistan, remaining on holiday in Crete while the Taliban took over.
In a decade plus of a political career he has been sacked, demoted or resigned from three government jobs.
Born 25 February 1974 in Buckinghamshire, he is the son of a Czech-born Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1938. He studied law at Oxford and Cambridge, was a lawyer in the commercial sector before entering politics in 2006 as an aide to Brexit-supporting Conservative MP David Davis, and then Remain-backing Dominic Grieve. He is also a karate black-belt.
His chart is notable for three separate strands in the light of the bullying complaints. Firstly he has a Pisces Sun Mercury square Neptune inconjunct Pluto, so will have an erratic approach to wielding power and find it difficult to modulate his behaviour in situations where he is in charge. A stressed Pluto is often given to pouring contempt on those they regard as weaker or have made mistakes.
Secondly he has an Air Grand Trine of Jupiter in Aquarius trine Saturn and South Node in Gemini trine Uranus in Libra – this makes him emotionally detached to the point of chilly, certainly lacking in empathy, overly focused on ideology and theories.
Most significant of all is probably his Mars in heavyweight Taurus which is not explosively angry – though in his case it is inconjunct his Uranus which might be – but it gives a scary impression of someone you don’t want to cross. His Mars is trine Venus in Capricorn and in an opportunistic square to Jupiter.
At the moment his Progressed Mars is conjunct his Saturn on one leg of the Grand Trine for a setback of major proportions with SA Neptune conjunct his Venus making him feel his popularity slipping away. Plus tr Neptune is squaring his Saturn within a few days, bringing deep uncertainty for the rest of this year into 2024; having just finished squaring his Nodal axis.
There’s nothing much ahead over the next three years for him that looks anything other than stuck and discouraged.
Rishi Sunak’s PM chart, 25 October 2022 11.15am always was due for a sharp elbow in the ribs now with tr Uranus square the Saturn at 18 degrees Aquarius. With SA Uranus continuing the disruptive, unsettled mood for the next few months as it closes the square to Saturn to exact. Yesterday’s Eclipse was also opposition the Term Moon, Sun, Venus in early Scorpio for a considerable crisis. The sinking-failure tr Neptune square Mars, around recently in March, returns for an extended period effectively hanging over this October to February 2024.
ADD ON: The UK Civil Service has its origins in the Northcote–Trevelyan Report which recommended a permanent, unified, politically neutral civil service, with appointments made on merit. The date on the report was 23 November 1853 though it was not implemented until 1870 (no date) when Prime Minister Gladstone made an Order in Council.
The 1853 chart has a Sagittarius Sun opposition Saturn in earthy, obstinate Taurus and widely opposition a Gemini North Node, square Mars in Virgo opposition Neptune. It has a Grand Trine of Jupiter in late Sagittarius in a confident trine to Pluto trine Mars – talented, confident, pushy, go-ahead though also scattered and argumentative.
It does seem to fit the Raab scenario with his Mars in Taurus exactly conjunct the Saturn for a chemistry of irritability and hostility. The relationship chart is even more stark with a composite Sun Venus opposition Pluto Mars in Cancer – which would give rise to a bitter power struggle and ruthless oneupmanship on one side or the other.
He’s howling and yowling but frankly I’d have fired him for the Afghanistan debacle which was outrageous and unforgiveable.
Further Add: The Civil Service 1870 chart is just as relevant to Raab since it has Mars in Taurus close to his. A clash of bulls. Plus tr Uranus conjunct the Pluto. All seems likely.
