The name of journalist and talk show host Geraldo Rivera has become synonymous with more sensational forms of talk television. His distinctive style, at once probing, aggressive, and intimate, has even led, at times, to parodies of him in a variety of print and broadcast media. He has seemed to contribute to this high-profile identification by playing himself (or a close approximation) in fictional settings, such as an episode of thirtysomething, a 1992 Perry Mason TV movie, the finale of Seinfeld, and the theatrical films The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Primary Colors (1998). Yet, ironically, his fear of going too far with his public image led him to turn down an offer to play the role of an over-the-top tabloid reporter in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994). A master of self-promotion, Rivera’s drive has taken his career in directions he may not have predicted. Despite having won ten Emmys and numerous journalism awards (including the Peabody), Rivera is still primarily known for the more public nature of both his personal life and his talk show.

Rivera was discovered while working as a lawyer for the New York Puerto Rican activist group the Young Lords. During the group’s occupation of an East Harlem church in 1970, Rivera had been interviewed on WABC-TV local news and caught the eye of the station’s news director Al Primo, who was looking for a Latino reporter to fill out his news team. In 1972, Rivera gained national attention with his critically acclaimed and highly rated special on the horrific abuse of mentally retarded patients at New York’s Willowbrook School. He then went on to work for ABC national programs, first as a special correspondent for Good Morning, America, and then, in 1978, for the prime-time investigative show 20/20. However, his brashness led to controversies with the network, and in 1985 he was fired after publicly criticizing ABC for canceling his report on an alleged relationship between John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.

Rivera was undaunted by his altercation with the network, and he moved to boost his visibility with an hour-long special on the opening of Al Capone’s secret vault in April 1986. The payoff for the audience was virtually nil, since the vault contained only dirt, but the show achieved the highest ratings for a syndicated special in television history. Rivera wrote in his autobiography, “My career was not over, I knew, but had just begun. And all because of a silly, high-concept stunt that failed to deliver on its titillating promise.”

The same high-concept approach became the base for Rivera’s talk show Geraldo, which debuted in September 1987. The first guest was Marla Hanson, a model whose face had been slashed on the orders of a jilted lover. Many critics attacked the show, and Rivera, for his theatrics and “swashbuckling bravado,” but Geraldo garnered a respectable viewership. However, Rivera has pointed out that it was his 1987 show, “Men in Lace Panties and the Women Who Love Them,” which turned the talk format in a more sensational direction. The following year, he broke talk show rating records with a highly publicized show on Nazi skinheads. During the show’s taping, a brawl had broken out between two of the guests—a 25-year-old leader of the White Aryan Resistance Youth and black activist Roy Innis. A thrown chair hit Rivera square in the face, breaking his nose. The show was news before it even aired. The press jumped on this opportunity to use Rivera as an example of television’s new extremes. A November 1988 cover of Newsweek carried a close-up of his bashed face next to a headline reading, “Trash TV: From the Lurid to the Loud, Anything Goes.”

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Geraldo (which was eventually renamed The Geraldo Rivera Show) continued to capitalize on the sensational aspects of Rivera’s reputation. He inserted himself into the talk show narrative, often using his own exploits and bodily desires to fill out the issue at hand. In a show on plastic surgery, Rivera had fat sucked from his buttocks and injected into his forehead in a procedure to reduce wrinkles. A few years later, in another procedure, he had his eyes tucked on the show. The publication of his autobiography, Exposing Myself, in the fall of 1991 caused a major stir due to Rivera’s revelations of his numerous affairs.

In a 1993 interview, Rivera offered an analysis of his own place in American life:

I’m so much a part of the popular culture now. I’m a punch line every night on one of the late-night shows . . . . I’m used as a generic almost in all the edito- rials and commentaries and certainly all the books about whether the news media has gone too far. It’s just that, what is a review going to do to me? They either like me or don’t like me, but I’m always interesting to watch.

By mid-1994 Rivera had begun working to recoup his former role as a “serious” journalist. While still taping episodes of his daytime talk show, he began hosting his own legal affairs program, Rivera Live, on CNBC and became a regular contributor to the Today Show. Although many at NBC News were uncomfortable with Rivera’s tabloid image, Rivera Live became one of the cable network’s highest-rated programs and Rivera won critical praise for his coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial in 1997. In early 1998, Rivera signed a lucrative new six-year contract with NBC, and in May he taped the last original episode of The Geraldo Rivera Show. In the fall of that year, Rivera became host of a second CNBC show, Upfront Tonight.

Yet Rivera could not completely shake the controversy that seemed to follow him. In 2001, he left CNBC with two years left on his contract for a position as war correspondent at the cable channel FOX News; a few months later he was lambasted for one of his reports from the U.S.-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan. After the deaths of three American soldiers in Kandahar by “friendly fire” in early December 2001, Rivera (dressed in flak jacket and carrying a pistol) reported that he had “walked over the spot where the friendly fire took so many of our men.... I said the Lord’s Prayer and really choked up.” Newspapers quickly pointed out that the “hallowed” ground of which he spoke was actually hundreds of miles away from where he was standing during his report. Rivera, admitting his mistake, blamed “the fog of war.” More criticism followed, as he acted as a swaggering patriot in many of his reports about events following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. When Rivera promised that if he ever found Osama bin Laden, he would “kick his head in, then bring it home and bronze it,” many wondered if this “new” Geraldo Rivera was all that different from the old.