What About Geraldo? – Jack Engelhard

 

 

This really isn’t about Geraldo as much as it is about all the other worthy people who never get a turn.

 

Nearly from the word go, Geraldo has been wrong about everything.

 

He travelled to Israel at a time when Palestinian Arab terrorists were slaughtering Israelis day and night and he sided with the terrorists.

 

In another combat zone and pretending to be a journalist, he got himself embedded with the 101^st Airborne Division fighting the 2003 War in Iraq…and here was Geraldo, on TV, revealing an upcoming operation. He even started drawing up a map in the sand! Our horrified generals got him kicked out, more safely into Kuwait, before he could do any more damage.

 

For most, a stunt like that would have been enough to doom a career, but this is Geraldo we’re talking about.

 

Starting with the Capone-Vault fiasco, Geraldo has stumbled from success to success. Admire him for that much; he’s a loser who keeps on winning. (For those who tuned in late – after months of hype and self-promotion without end as to the treasures Geraldo was to uncover, ta-da; there was nothing in Capone’s vault.)

 

From one malfunction to the next he keeps getting rebooted.

 

He’s been bumped from one network to another and today we have him on Fox News and how he got there nobody knows….not even Fox. Is he a nephew or does he have the goods on somebody? Even the top brass didn’t know what to do with him so they stuck him somewhere around midnight where he’d be less likely to embarrass the network.

 

He shows up from time to time as an “expert” on “The Factor" and on “Imus in the Morning” and other Fox programs and here too he is wrong about everything.

 

Most recently he spoke up on the Trayvon Martin tragedy… and he was wrong again.

 

(I’ll take all bets when I argue that Fox News is the most reliable news and opinion channel on TV and that Don Imus has the best Morning Show on radio or TV.)

 

Our man Geraldo has more than TV going for him. He’s now got his own radio show as further proof that you don’t have to be good to get ahead just lucky. Geraldo can’t be stopped and Don Imus can’t stop promoting him…and this is what prompts this rant, for Imus is tops in the business, as is Fox News, so what’s Geraldo doing at the same table with the adults?

 

Many in the same business as Geraldo get it wrong only once and it’s curtains. CBS Reporter Adam Jacobi was dumped after he prematurely aired Joe Paterno’s obit. Texas journalist Scott Braddock got fired for (allegedly) getting it wrong on abortion politics. Legendary writer Nat Hentoff served the Village Voice for some 50 years and was let go for reasons that still remain murky.

 

So with a rap sheet like Geraldo’s, how does Geraldo get all the love? Dumb luck, I guess, in every sense of those words. Or is it that we love clowns?

 

About the author: Novelist Jack Engelhard’s international bestseller “Indecent Proposal” is now on Kindle here, as is his love-triangle thriller on media corruption, “The Bathsheba Deadline” here. Website: www.indecentviews.com