I need to say it again how truly sad it is for those of us who went to journalism school (I was at the Medill School of Journalism) in the early 70s to watch the current incarnation of Geraldo Rivera. Once upon a 1970s time he was the quintessential aspiring investigative broadcast journalist who was indeed something of a role model due to his “enterprise reporting” and charisma when he was on TV. The current Geraldo Rivera incarnation is increasingly a Saturday Night Live sketch and career winddown come to life.
And here is his latest. He had once apologized to Trayvon Martin’s parents for comments suggesting that, in effect, Martin was asking for it by wearing a hoodie which he said was a gangster look. So much for that.
Now he’s back to saying hoodies are “thug wear.”
Mr. Rivera: I’ve been in a lot of schools all over the country, and in MANY schools kids of ALL ages wear hoodies. So a first grader is dressed like a thug? In fact, in one school an adult male teacher had one on. When I crossed the Oregon border into California several months ago while on a rest stop I almost did a Tweet about the fact that at this rest stop several people in their thirties wore hoodies. Oh: and these were people of ALL RACES who wore “thug wear.”
So if Joe Gandelman, who lives in California and was bar mitzvahed in Connecticut, is in Florida at night wearing a hoodie and is shot, it can be partially explained and/or justified because he was wearing thug wear? I assume your constant, almost obsessive need to brand hoodies as a provocative criminal wardrobe statement would include if a white, short guy named Joe Gandelman whose teenage years have long since vanished wears it, too.
So were all these kids in schools, all these adults wearing “thug wear,” and therefore be even the slightest tiniest reason to blow them away because they look like gangsters wearing hoodies?
Should hoodie manufacturers, just make it easier by putting targets on the backs of hoodies? How long before someone sells a target that has a teen with a hoodie? Oops: It aready happened…
Or is the implication that someone has to be a black or a Latino teen, walking around at night with “thug wear” to make that a factor that can even remotely justify a shooting? So it has to be race combined with wardrobe? Is that it?
The evolving facts of the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman case are one thing.
In fact, some believe (and not just Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly) think the evidence coming out is bolstering Zimmerman’s case.
Suggesting that hoodies are “thug wear” as if this somehow was even .999th a justification for the shooting someone is another.
But, this post and your words gets you attention — which your reporting which used to get attention no longer gets.
After this latest comment of yours that seemingly negates your earlier apology linked above, I have a wardrobe suggestion for you, something you can wear over your mouth:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.