Geraldo
"Gerry" Rivera (born
Gerald Riviera on July 4,
1943) is an American
attorney, journalist,
writer, reporter and
former talk show host. He is known
to have an affinity for melodramatic, high-profile stories. Rivera
hosts the
newsmagazine program
Geraldo at Large, and
appears regularly on
Fox News
Channel.
Early life
Rivera was
born in Manhattan
, New
York
, the son of Lillian (née Friedman), a waitress, and Cruz "Allen" Rivera, a restaurant
worker and cab driver. Rivera's father was
Puerto Rican and his mother was
Jewish, and he was raised "mostly Jewish" and had a
Bar Mitzvah.
He grew up in Manhattan and West Babylon, New York
. His mother inspired him to become a
journalist when she signed him up for a journal camp at his high
school his sophomore year.
He is an alumnus of University of
Arizona
, where he played varsity lacrosse as goalie.
From September 1961 to May 1963, he attended the
State University
of New York Maritime College, where he was a member of the
rowing team.
He received his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1969, did
postgraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania
that same year, and briefly attended the Columbia University Graduate School of
Journalism
during the summer of 1970. After a brief career
in law enforcement where he served the NYPD as an investigator, he
returned to law and became a lawyer for a New York Puerto
Rican activist group, the Young Lords
and attracted the attention of news producer Al
Primo when he was interviewed about the group's occupation of a
Spanish
Harlem
church in 1969. Primo offered Rivera a job
as a reporter but was unhappy with the first name "Gerald" (he
wanted something more identifiably Latin) so they agreed to go with
the pronunciation used by the Puerto Rican side of Rivera's family:
Geraldo. He is a member of
Tau Delta
Phi fraternity.
Career
Early stages
Geraldo
Rivera was hired by WABC-TV
in New York
City as a reporter for Eyewitness
News. In 1972, he garnered national attention and
won a Peabody Award for his report on
the neglect and abuse of mentally
retarded patients at Staten Island
's Willowbrook State School
and began to appear on ABC national programs such as
20/20 and Nightline. After
John Lennon watched Rivera's report on
the patients at Willowbrook, he and Rivera formed a benefit concert
called
"One to One" (released
in 1986 as
Live in New York
City.) Rivera reported Lennon's murder on
Nightline on
December 8,
1980. Rivera also appeared in
The U.S. vs. John Lennon, a
movie about Lennon and
Yoko Ono's lives in
New York City. It was released in 2007.
Around this time, Rivera also began hosting ABC's
Good Night
America. The show featured the famous refrain from
Arlo Guthrie's hit "City Of New Orleans"
(written by
Steve Goodman) as the
theme.
After
Elvis Presley died in 1977,
various media mistakenly reported that he had died from a
heart attack. Rivera then investigated
Presley's prescription drug records and concluded that he had died
from multiple drug intake.
His conclusion caused Tennessee
medical authorities to later revoke the medical
license of Dr. George
C. Nichopoulos, for
overprescribing.
In October 1985, ABC's
Roone Arledge
refused to air a report done by Sylvia Chase, for
20/20 on the relationship between
Marilyn Monroe and
John and
Robert
Kennedy. Rivera publicly criticized Arledge's journalistic
integrity, claiming that Arledge's friendship with the
Kennedy family (for example,
Pierre Salinger, a former Kennedy aide,
worked for
ABC News at the time) had caused
him to spike the story; as a result, Rivera was fired. Sylvia Chase
quit
20/20, although she returned to ABC News many years
later. It has never aired.
In April 1986, Rivera hosted the syndicated special
The Mystery of Al Capone's
Vault, an ill-conceived adventure where Rivera excavated
what he had been told was the site of
Al
Capone's buried treasure trove. Rivera broadcast live as the
site was excavated, fully expecting to find a store of the former
gangster's wealth.
The show was heavily advertised,
particularly on Chicago
's WGN
television
station. A medical examiner was brought along for the
excavation in case any dead bodies were excavated. The show was on
air for several hours, displacing regularly scheduled programming,
as Rivera's team penetrated the vault he was sure would yield the
famed loot. Ultimately, the vault was found to contain a few broken
bottles. Rivera held one of these bottles aloft for the camera and
excitedly stated that it had once contained "bootleg
moonshine gin".
Talk show and Satanism special
In 1987, Rivera began producing and hosting the daytime talk show
Geraldo, which ran for
11 years. The show featured controversial guests and theatricality,
which led to the characterization of his show as "
Trash TV" by
Newsweek and two
United States senators. One of the
early shows was titled "Men in Lace Panties and the Women Who Love
Them". His nose was broken in a
well-publicized brawl during a 1988 show,
involving
white supremacists,
anti-racist
skinheads,
black activists, and
Jewish activists.
In 1987, he hosted the first of a series of
prime time special reports dealing with an
alleged epidemic of
Satanic ritual
abuse. He stated:
- "Estimates are that there are over 1 million Satanists in this country ... The majority of them
are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network.
From
small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and
FBI
attention to their Satanic sexual child abuse, child pornography and grisly Satanic
murders. The odds are that this is happening in your
town."
More credible estimates are about 10,000 adult members of religious
Satanic churches, temples and grottos as well as 10,000 solitary
practitioners of Satanism.
Later career
In 1994,
he began hosting nightly discussion of the news on CNBC
called
Rivera Live while continuing to
host Geraldo. The show was
portrayed in the final episode of
Seinfeld, with Rivera as himself reporting on
the lengthy
trial of the show's four main
characters.
Later, he would take his talk show in a different direction, moving
it from "Trash TV" to a more subdued, serious show, and changed its
name from
Geraldo to
The Geraldo Rivera Show. By
this time, however, the show had run its course, and was cancelled
in 1998.
In 1997,
Rivera contracted with NBC to work as a reporter
for six years for $30 million, including hosting Rivera
Live on CNBC.
During 1998 and 1999, he extensively covered the
impeachment of President
Bill Clinton. Following the
terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, he accepted a pay cut and went to work for
the
Fox News Channel as a war correspondent
in November 2001.
Rivera's brother Craig accompanied him as a
cameraman on assignments in Afghanistan
.
In 2008, Rivera came out with a book called
His Panic:
Why Americans fear Hispanics in the U.S.. The title "His
Panic" is a play on the word "
Hispanic,"
and describes the
anti-Hispanic
racism in the United States. Rivera himself
is part Hispanic, his father coming from
Puerto Rico.
On September 12, 2008, during the Fox News coverage of Hurricane
Ike, Rivera was knocked over by the storm surge debris while
reporting live in Galveston near the 17 foot high sea wall.
Controversies
War coverage controversies
Controversy arose in early 2003, while
Rivera was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq
.
During a Fox News broadcast, Rivera began to disclose an upcoming
operation, even going so far as to draw a map in the sand for his
audience. The military immediately issued a firm denouncement of
his actions, saying it put the operation at risk, and nearly
expelled Rivera from Iraq.
Two days later, he announced that he would
be reporting on the Iraq conflict from Kuwait
. "Confusion surrounds Rivera's expulsion from
Iraq", CNN, April 1,
2003
The "map in the sand" incident inspired a
14th season
episode of
NBC's legal drama
Law & Order, entitled "Embedded".
It was also spoofed on
The Daily
Show, in which correspondent
Stephen Colbert drew a map in the sand of
where Rivera's head had gone.
Another
controversy arose when he announced he was carrying a weapon while
reporting in Afghanistan. He said, "If they're going to get us, it's
going to be in a gun fight. It's not going to be a murder. It's not
going to be a crime. It's going to be a gun fight." Many were
offended by the very fact that as a reporter he was carrying a
weapon.
The other aspect of the controversy,
however, was due to the fact that he had often promoted civilian
gun control prior to his time reporting
in Afghanistan, such as when (after the Columbine
High School massacre
in Littleton, Colorado
) Rivera asked, "How much longer are we gonna take
it? How much longer are we gonna be wrapping in the flag of
patriotism to justify 250 million guns out there? How much longer?"
As an
NRA
magazine article pointed out, "Rivera, who has made
plenty of noise in the past by promoting various anti-gun
proposals, revealed recently that while covering the war in
Afghanistan, where he doesn't feel quite so safe, he's conveniently
jumped to the other side of the fence."
New Orleans / The New York Times controversy
In
2005. Rivera engaged in a nasty feud with
The New York Times over
their allegations that he pushed aside a member of a rescue team in
order to be filmed "assisting" a woman in a wheelchair down some
steps in the aftermath of
Hurricane
Katrina. The ensuing controversy caused Rivera to appear on
television and demand a retraction from the
Times. He
further threatened to sue the paper if one was not provided.
Other work
Virginia Tech massacre coverage
Following
the Virginia
Tech massacre
in April 2007, the news media released that the
shooter was an Asian male student. On
the night following the massacre, during
Geraldo at Large,
a student tipped Rivera that on
Facebook, a
popular website among college students, an Asian student appeared
to match the description of the shooter. He was in his mid 20s and
had several pictures of himself armed with his many guns. Skeptical
of the unconfirmed report, Rivera made sure to show neither the
student's name nor face. But other media did report that the
student involved was Wayne Chiang, who, as a result of the exposure
apparently became associated temporarily with the crimes.
Furthermore, Chiang's photos have appeared on CTV's news program
intermixed with photographs of the actual killer,
Cho Seung Hui.
Michelle Malkin "spit" controversy
On
September 1,
2007, Rivera criticized
Fox
News Channel contributor and substitute host
Michelle Malkin when he was quoted in a
Boston Globe interview as
saying,
"Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator
I've ever met in my life", he says.
"She actually believes that neighbors should start
snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting
people.
It's good she's in D.C. and I’m in NY.
I’d spit on her if I saw her.”
Geraldo apologized publicly on
The O'Reilly Factor on
September 14,
2007 stating
that it was "ungentlemanly" of him to say that. Malkin considered
his apology "a farce", and has decided to stop appearing on
The
O'Reilly Factor, as she felt the show mishandled the
situation.
In popular culture
In the film
UHF, he is parodied
by
"Weird Al" Yankovic by Yankovic
playing the character of George Newman. Newman, in addition to
being the president of the
UHF
network, has a tabloid talk show called "Town Talk with George
Newman".
A humorous promo starts with Newman asking guests, "Sex with
furniture, what do you think?” Newman is then shown opening "Al
Capone's glove compartment” and exclaiming, "Aha! Road maps!”
Finally, the fake commercial ends with a full scale brawl in the
studio. Newman first gets knocked out cold with a chair and then
the brawl really starts. The guests: a
Klansman, a man in a
Jason-style hockey mask with an axe, a freaky
smiling teen girl, and others, break out in a fight on stage. The
audience, armed to the teeth with nooses, torches and other
weapons, join in. The last frame has a close-up of a bandaged
Newman hyping an upcoming show, "
Lesbian
Nazi hookers abducted by
UFOs and forced into weight loss programs, all this
week, on Town Talk."
Rivera had a small, uncredited part in the 1990 film
The Bonfire of the
Vanities as a television reporter named "Robert Corso". He
also has a short cameo on the series finale of
Seinfeld with his former news colleague,
Jane Wells. He was also the inspiration
for the character Wayne Gale (portrayed by
Robert Downey Jr.) in
Oliver Stone's 1994 film
Natural Born Killers; in fact,
much of the character's interaction with the murderers Mickey and
Mallory Knox was inspired heavily from Rivera's interview with
Charles Manson. A Rivera parody,
"Hector Ramirez", was a recurring character in several
Sunbow-produced cartoons based on
Hasbro properties of the 1980s, including
Transformers,
GIJoe, and
Jem.
Rivera is lampooned in the
South
Park episode
A Million
Little Fibers, in which he investigates allegations, revealed
to him by
Oprah Winfrey's private
parts, that
Steven McTowelie, author of a
Million Little Fibers, is actually a towel.
Kurt Vonnegut mentions Rivera several
times in various novels, including
Palm Sunday and
Fates Worse than Death, never in
a favorable light. Rivera was married to Vonnegut's daughter
Edith. They divorced in 1974.
Stephen Colbert has frequently
lampooned Rivera on
The Colbert
Report, especially calling attention to his mustache. He
has explained in interviews that Rivera was one of the inspirations
for the "man with a mission" facet of Colbert's right-wing pundit
character. "That's the
heart of [Rivera's] persona: that he
really is changing
the world with every interview he does — just slowly, syllable by
syllable, he is changing the great ship of human destiny with his
will toward justice." Colbert's character, in turn, "thinks, 'We're
gonna bust things wide open with this report,' when in fact he
never has an idea of what he's talking about." Rivera has since
appeared on the show.
Rivera appeared in a
Dilbert
strip surrounding
Dogbert's
cult of
personality. Rivera hypes the show, only for Dogbert to feign
confusion over what Rivera is talking about. Rivera then looks
embarrassed into the camera, while Dogbert ads "I love live
television" (in reality,
Geraldo was always taped).
The One Life To Live character
Markko
Rivera was born under the name "Geraldo Rivera," but changed it
to Markko because he hated having the same name as the
reporter.
"...and the women who love them" has become a catchphrase that is
often used as an ironic description of scandalous, usually domestic
drama that frequently injects elements of
sexuality and deviant behavior.
Geraldo Rivera has also been spoofed several times on
Saturday Night Live.
See also
References
- Urban Legends Reference Pages: Geraldo Rivera and
Jerry Rivers
- Geraldo Rivera Biography (1943-)
- Ancestry of Geraldo Rivera
- Geraldo Rivera for Israeli Knesset?
- Do the Jews Need Geraldo -
InterfaithFamily.com
- Geraldo.com - Sailing Book (continues)
- Fort Schuyler Maritime Alumni Association
- Rivera, Geraldo
- * Urban Legend about Geraldo Rivera's name being
changed from Jerry Rivers
- See also List of Peabody
Award winners #1972
- Geraldo Rivera'S Influence On The Satanic Ritual Abuse And
Recovered Memory Hoaxes
-
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87866811
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLZ7lK7-G_A
- A NATION AT WAR: COVERAGE; Pentagon Says Geraldo
Rivera Will Be Removed From Iraq - New York Times
- "NRA Targets Geraldo Rivera", AIM,
March 5, 2002
- Geraldo Rivera might sue The New York Times - TV
Squad
- YouTube - CTV believes Asians ALL LOOK SAME
- Michelle Malkin » Geraldo Rivera unhinged
- Making waves - The Boston Globe
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkzZY9dsBrw
- Michelle Malkin » Stiiiiill going
-
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=72856
-
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4583007
-
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=163799
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