Non-MENSA, nonideological, and nonauthoritarian -- Jerry Springer is the first program in history to sweep the Nielsens by focusing on freaky threesomes. In the past year, the producers have abandoned broader material like 680-pound moms and KKK members in favor of a sort of Rainbow Coalition of interracial, homo-, hetero-, and bisexual love triangles and rectangles. There’s the dominatrix and her two slaves, one a hermaphrodite, the other a transsexual. There’s the pierced, tattooed, spidery Goth girl involved with the wispy, goateed guy -- at least until she brings her other lover out, another Goth girl-cum-Megadeth-worshiper type. There are the exotic dancers in hair extensions and purple nails and tiny spandex dresses and platform heels cheating on their girlfriends (who also go for hair extensions and purple nails and spandex and cheating). And there’s that stylin’ married man, in freshly laundered Hilfiger, who cheated on his sweet, chubby, clueless wife with an obese, mean mistress and then, for the pièce de résistance, brought out his splay-collared, disco-suited boyfriend. (“I should have known you were gay when I saw your pink pager!’’ cried the wife.)

Perhaps the most groundbreaking, and democratizing, fact about Springer is that the interracial or homosexual aspects of these couplings are taken for granted. It’s the human betrayal that the producers orchestrate. But there again, it’s not like other talk shows, where guests cry or sit in mute rage. It’s packaged action spectacle, like pro wrestling -- and producers even provide food and flowers for the participants’ throwing pleasure.

Jerry is the lightly Queens-accented voice of God coming from the wilderness of the audience (he says he stays in the back because he’s “a chicken’’). Otherwise, the action is underscored only by a string of squashed, squawking, awkward interrupted sounds, the pitch of expletives deleted and security guys shouting “Sit down.’’ It is the cartoon #$%&*@! made literal, an electronic tongue blocked by censors. Television at its most reduced and postliterate, Jerry Springer’s great achievement is that it’s the talk show that has all but obliterated talk.

In its place, America’s new No. 1 show gives us butting heads -- the perfect visual metaphor for the breakdown of communication, if not civilization.

In Springer’s own perverse, parallel moral universe, he speaks proudly of never having had anyone associated with the O.J. trial or Clinton’s female troubles on his show. And perhaps with the dismissal of the Paula Jones suit, Springer’s got a point about the hypocrisy of the high-minded but relentless coverage by Sam and Cokie and Ted Koppel. But in giving voice to a different population of talking -- albeit often bleeped-out -- heads, Springer places himself less in the canon of Sally Jessy, Ricki, and Montel and more in line with Abraham, Martin, and John.

“I’ve never had to change my politics,’’ Springer likes to say about his transformation from sixties anti-establishment idealist to talk-show high sleazario. “If there’s anything in this absurdity, it’s that much of the constituency that voted for me -- black, white, blue-collar, inner-city, disenfranchised -- is still with me. I never had to take back a position.’’

He sees the media criticism of his show as “the ultimate bias of elitism and racism. We really do believe we are superior,’’ he says, “just because we went to better schools and speak English better.”

The distinction between shrill political argument and physically wigging out over sexual relationships doesn’t register with him. “Why doesn’t anyone ever say, ‘Why do you go on Crossfire with all that yelling?’ Some of the stuff on that show is much more damaging. But because they wear jackets and ties and have titles and are rich, then we don’t judge?’’

Asked what his old hero Robert F. Kennedy might think of his show, Springer replies, “If there was ever a public figure who could reach across a class divide of elitism to understand what you’re feeling, it was Bobby Kennedy. He would really, really feel for the people on our show.”

‘What he says is confusing, because there are huge elements of truth to it,’’ says Joshua Gamson, who teaches sociology at Yale and is the author of the just-published Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (University of Chicago Press). Gamson started researching the book in the wake of the murder of Scott Amedure by Jonathan Schmitz, who was humiliated on the Jenny Jones show when Amedure announced that he had a crush on him. The trial and lawsuit have had a withering effect on the surprise setups and tabloid content of talk shows, sending many back to the safer confines of makeovers and weight loss.

“The appeal of Springer is transgression and rebellion, but it’s a bit of an empty rebellion,’’ Gamson says. “Springer might be representing people who otherwise wouldn’t be on television, but that does nothing to empower those people. . . . He’s smartly playing into the structure where the range of images is narrow. He has somehow managed to position himself as the alternative. But the alternative ends up being really narrow in itself. . . . Empowering means more than display.’’

While it’s true that the guests on display are not members of the credentialed, chattering class who appear as pundits on TV, it’s also the case that they satisfy a sort of reverse formula, playing into classic stereotypes of lower-class behavior that’s pure Stanley Kowalski: out-of-control, over-the-top, irrational and violent.

A recent Springer segment called “Love Against the Odds” presented an encore appearance by an armless, legless woman in a sleeveless dress. At the breaks, she flapped the stumps of her upper arms to applaud, but lest we feel any compassion, she also launched a bleep-bleep-bleeped verbal assault on her ex-husband, accusing him of stealing her money for crack. He more than returned the favor, pointing out that he has a MasterCard, that he makes $12.75 an hour, and that furthermore she’s a whore.

Springer won’t concede even the possibility that his show exploits human suffering, no matter that some of the segments amount to little more than class voyeurism. He constructs his own personal high road out of the fact that appearances on the show are voluntary. Most guests connect by responding to the 800-number that runs onscreen, accompanied by text like ARE YOU PREGNANT BY A MAN WHO HAS ANOTHER WOMAN PREGNANT AND YOU WANT TO MAKE A DECISION? They get plane fare, a limo ride, a hotel room, and food vouchers. They can also dip into the show’s wardrobe closet, which offers long-sleeved shirts for tattooed men, empire dresses for pregnant teenagers, and beaded backless gowns for transvestites.

Jerry’s parents, Margot And Richard Springer (now both deceased), were German Jews who escaped through the underground to London three weeks before World War II broke out. “My father was an air-raid warden,” Springer says. “He’d stand on top of a building with a helmet and a whistle.” Jerry and his older sister, Evelyn, were born in London, and the family traveled on the Queen Mary to New York in 1949. He was 5. The Springers settled in the safe haven of Kew Gardens, Queens. “I am the son of a vendor. My father made and sold stuffed animals on the Jersey coasts and beaches,” he says. “I remember loading up the samples in the car. My mother was a clerk in a bank. They were both very hardworking. Neither of them spoke English very well.”

They lived in a “Junior 4’’ apartment, meaning that Evelyn (now a linguist who teaches French) got the dining area as a bedroom and Gerald, all through his adolescence and until he left for college, slept in a partitioned corner of his parents’ room. (“I had a little accordion door, I remember. And God bless them, they gave me the windows.’’) He remembers the close familial quarters with such fondness that, he says now, “I was actually thinking of going back and buying the apartment, but of course, if I visit the city I want to be in Manhattan.’’