Geraldo Rivera has been in the news for the past few days not because of his journalism, but because of a nearly-nude selfie he tortured everyone’s eyes with Sunday morning. Rivera has explained the rationale behind the photo and also responded to media coverage.
The photo was posted on Sunday morning. The Fox News reporter wrote, “70 is the new 50 (Erica and family are going to be so pissed...but at my age...).” It earned over 1,200 retweets, but it is since gone from his Twitter profile.
On Monday, Rivera questioned the media’s coverage of his picture. “If my pix is so offensive to media critics, why do they keeping flashing the damn thing over&over? ‘Isn't this terrible? Let's see it again,’” he tweeted.
According to Mediate, Rivera explained on his radio show that he did it to avoid “boredom.”
“There I was at 2:30 in the morning, Sunday morning… and there’s no one to talk to, so I’m sitting around, I had a drink, and I had taken that picture on Saturday morning, and I was looking at it and I just said to myself: ‘You know what, I gotta tweet this thing,’” Rivera explained to guest Eric Bolling. “I look pretty good for a 70-year-old, and I think because I’m so old people will cut me some slack. They won’t take it too seriously.”
Bolling later told Rivera, “You are one of the smartest people I know...but what you did is one of the dumbest things a smart guy could possibly do.”
Politico reports that Eliot Spitzer, who knows a thing or two about scandal, gave Rivera some advice.
“The public will not only forgive you but they will say move on, because, and this is where the reservoir of good will comes from, you have been the journalist who focuses on the tough issues, no one agrees with you all the time but I’ve said before, when it comes back to the issue of care for those who are disabled, for the weakest and poorest and most vulnerable in our society, you did something that is so overwhelmingly important that that reservoir of goodwill carried through,” Spitzer said.
image: Twitter