the one year anniversary commemoration of hurricane katrina has served to remind me of a very important fact - geraldo rivera is the greatest journalist in the history of the world. a year ago, geraldo reported live from new orleans for fox news. if you missed geraldo’s coverage of katrina’s aftermath, do yourself a favor- take a saturday drive down to the museum of television and radio in beverly hills, search their extensive database for the keywords: “geraldo, hurricane, baby, crying”, take a seat in one of the facility’s plush viewing stations, and watch america’s preeminent newsman do his motherf—ing job.the true “golden age” of geraldo’s decades-long mastering and commandeering of the television medium was actually late 1980s. in 1988, there were no fewer than two geraldo rivera specials that towered above the rest of the decade’s investigative journalism:

1) on october 25^th 1988, geraldo hosted a 2-hour primetime special about devil worship in america that permanently scarred my psyche. the show was emblematic of ‘80s “satanic panic”, encompassing (and connecting) everything from ritual human sacrifice to ozzy osborne concerts. geraldo kept warning the audience throughout the special that children should not be watching, but somehow, my parents let me see the entire show. nice going, mom and dad. the only concrete fact i still remember from the two-hour show was that one of the church of satan bigwigs was pretty good friends with sammy davis jr. this created a really uncomfortable association between sammy davis jr. and satan in my mind. that association lasted through my adolescence until i learned to appreciate sammy’s incomparable (and totally non-satanic) singing and dancing talent as a teenager. plus, i’ve since hypothesized that sammy was probably friends with satanists just to meet some loose goth chicks and maybe get some freaky orgy action.

2) on november 3^rd 1988, geraldo taped an episode of his syndicated show about another sinister set of americans-skinheads. but this time, geraldo got a piece of the action, geraldo-style. this show was notable because someone threw a chair at geraldo and broke his nose. then, geraldo beat up on one of the white supremacists. “cool-headed objectivity be damned!” should be the company motto at geraldo co. the only other journalist to act this much like charles bronson in deathwish is the late david brinkley, who, upon the occasion of his retirement, was asked if he would have liked to have interviewed adolf hitler. without missing a beat, brinkley replied: “no. i would have liked to have shot him.”

anyway, nearly twenty years later, geraldo is still gloating over beating up the racist skinhead. because if there’s anything geraldo hates more than a skinhead, it’s a racist skinhead: