nd where entertainment can itself become news if it is shocking enough, violent enough, or offensive enough. Geraldo is in the forefront of this trend.
Geraldo seems to be a lighting rod for criticism of tabloid television in spite of the fact that he did not create it and has only taken advantage of a market that already existed. He has been successful and has attracted a sizeable audience, and he has also been one of the most visible of the tabloid talk-show hosts because of several violent incidents that have gotten him and his show on the news.
Geraldo Rivera is half Jewish and half Puerto Rican. He was born one of five children of Cruz Rivera and Lilly Friedman, both of whom worked in a Manhattan cafe. Geraldo grew up in a Brooklyn neighborhood where most of the other kids were Hispanic or Jewish, but not both, and then moved to Long Island, where the other kids were predominantly Irish, Italian, or black. His religion is still Jewish, though he says that he practices it badly. His designated national origin is Puerto Rican, and he has denied charges that this was a convenient choice for a man to make at a time when advancement was possible by the "ethnic route." He was arrested when he was still in school for stealing five new tires. After high school, he took remedial English and mathematics. For a time he worked as a salesman and merchant seaman, and then he enrolled in the University of Arizona as Gerald Rivera. He says he did this because he and his father believed he would encounter racism in the West, and with this name he could be accepted as a vague European-sounding individual.
When he was 23, Geraldo entered Brooklyn Law School, and he considers this the beginning of his life. He earned a degree and then became a crusading local television reporter at WABC in New York. He would work his way up from there to network correspondent at ABC. He was noted for his action in pursuing a story, and he would ...