After Trayvon Martin‘s last moments were captured on a 7-Eleven surveillance video last week, it didn’t take long for Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera to put his foot in his mouth and say something stupid.
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On Friday, Rivera appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s O’Reilly Factor and proclaimed that in Trayvon’s 7-Eleven tape, taken moments before he was fatally shot, the 17-year-old was wearing a large hoodie, a.k.a. “thug wear.”
After the comments, Trayvon’s family attorney Ben Crump went at Rivera for suggesting the shooting was somehow Trayvon’s fault because of what he was wearing.
Crump told Rivera that his comments were completely ridiculous and he was “embarrassing [his] son again” with his statements.
Rivera didn’t challenge Crump’s remarks, but instead asked him if the family is going to push for a hate crimes prosecution. Crump didn’t say for certain whether they would, professing not to want to “try this case in television.” But he then turned back to his criticism of Rivera’s comments:
“You can’t profile people and act on it. It would be one thing if you profile and call the police and let the police deal with it, but you can’t act on it.
Because then, you give a license to everybody to say if a black man is walking in his neighborhood, going to the store with his hoodie up, you can shoot him. And you cant do that.
It’s wrong anywhere. There’s no justification for that, and the last thing I will say is this, Geraldo. You’re going to –- you’re embarrassing your son again with these statements.”
Rivera has once again managed to change the discussion to something very stupid and inconsequential.
