Yesterday, Geraldo Rivera ungracefully weighed in on the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, and thoroughly pissed off a lot of people when he said, "I think [Martin's] hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was." Almost instantaneously, there was a Tumblr dedicated to the many, many times Rivera has himself worn a hoodie—and it turns out even his son was embarrassed: "My own son just wrote to say he's ashamed of my position re hoodies-still I feel parents must do whatever they can to keep their kids safe," Rivera tweeted.
“Gabriel broke my heart. He’s my oldest, 32, and he just told me that for the first time in his life he’s ashamed of what I wrote on [Fox News Latino],” Rivera told Politico in an email. If he was looking to have his cake and eat it, he seems to have done it: by acknowledging his own son's revulsion at his idiotic comments, Rivera acknowledged the outcry while refusing to apologize or reword his statements. And instead of engaging with this critics, he continued to defend himself in a tone deaf manner on Twitter: "Its not blaming the victim Its common sense-look like a gangsta&some armed schmuck will take you at your word...In the avalanche of criticism how interesting that most minority moms back me because they want their sons to live long and prosper."
He also tried to connect President Obama's comments about Trayvon into his Twitter ramblings: "President Obama says if he had a son he would look like Trayvon- He could add, and he would never let his son walk around DC in a hoodie." Making his first public comments on the death, Obama had said: "When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." While most were impressed with Obama's commets, Newt Gingrich told Sean Hannity he was appalled, and claimed Obama was trying to race-bait:
What the President said is disgraceful. It's not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period...Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn't look like him? That's just nonsense dividing this country up….Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong.
