skippy the bush kangaroo: I've Done A Lot More Television Than Geraldo Rivera

Saturday, June 24, 2006

I've Done A Lot More Television Than Geraldo Rivera

Crooks and Liars has the video of Geraldo Rivera saying he's "seen a lot more combat than John Kerry." He uses his "foxhole cred" to support the eternal occupation of Iraq. I'll just say this:

I've done a lot more television than Geraldo Rivera. Specifically, I made my first TV appearance in 1958 on local television in Utica, NY, when local "media" (as they were not yet known) covered a citywide get-together of pre-schoolers.

I actually remember it -- it's one of my first memories. The reporter pointed toward a wall and say "Say hi to Mommy!" I looked at the wall -- made of corrugated tin -- expecting my mother to materialize through it the way that Superman did when he walked through walls.

Seeing my confusion, he pointed to the camera. I remember staring into its blue lenses - their seemingly endless depth fascinating me - and speaking my first televised words. Those words were heard by my family, sitting at home around our Philco (the one that looked like a big cabinet with a 9-inch screen). They were:

"Mommy? I don't see my Mommy."

See, I knew already that the media were untrustworthy. I wish other on-air personalities shared that innate sense of skepticism. I was born to do what I do.

My only other television appearance ever was my dustup with Tucker Carlson this year, which Carlson later misrepresented in order to imply I was a "slanderer." (On the other had, he did post the video so you can judge for yourself.) It was not unlike my first appearance, in that my reasonable questions were never addressed.

The result? I can legitimately boast that I have a broadcast career of nearly half a century. And what advice do I have for that inexperienced upstart Rivera?

Don't give away any military secrets, leave the foreign policy advice for wiser heads -- and those Burberry coats don't make you look dashing, they make you look like a kid wearing a grown-up's clothes while pretending to do his job.

Which, come to think of it ...

posted by RJ Eskow at 11:51 AM |