TV: At Large and In Charge

Geraldo Rivera tells you what to think

Josh Bell

Geraldo Rivera is an asshole. There's really no other way to say it. After watching a few episodes of his new daily, syndicated show, Geraldo At Large, the overwhelming reaction I had to Rivera's brand of in-your-face, scare-tactics journalism was, "What an unpleasant man." Different people want different things out of their newscasts, but very few want the news to be mean to them.


Meanness, however, is the overwhelming effect of At Large, which airs locally weekdays at 7:30 p.m. on KFBT Channel 33 and at 10:30 p.m. on KVWB Channel 21. It's not exactly a nightly newscast in the vein of traditional network shows on ABC, CBS and NBC, but it's more focused on the events of the day than the show it's replaced in syndication, the tabloid A Current Affair. Embodying the "at large" portion of the title, Rivera hosts the show on location from a different city each day, from which he reports the show's top story. Generally this isn't a breaking-news story, but rather a sensationalistic, fear-mongering report about a tragedy (or potential tragedy). The show's premiere screamed about sex offenders on the loose in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Not that any sex offenders escaped from prison—just that those who had been convicted in the past and are now required to register were proving tough to track down. No actual instances of sex offenses had yet been reported.


So it goes, with Rivera offering his smarmy judgment on every story, beating his viewers into submission. "Who are you mad at?" is the first question Rivera asks a man whose mother and aunt perished in a tragic bus accident. When the man timidly professes to being more sad than angry, Rivera quickly cuts him off with a fresh expression of outrage. Although the show is meant to be news, Rivera treats his interview subjects the way cable news pundits treat their guests, cutting them off when they don't suit whatever ideological slant he's placed on the story.


Interspersed with Rivera's main report are news bites from his army of blond, female reporters, each holed up in some anonymous studio, racing through seconds-long reports about more crashes, fires, robberies and murders. Occasionally you'll see something heartwarming, such as a baby panda, but it's gone almost before you can register that it's there. Although Rivera has a few male correspondents (mostly dubious "experts"), it's the almost interchangeable women who make up the bulk of the show's support team. Main anchor Laurie Dhue, who clearly graduated from the Rita Cosby school of broadcasting, tosses back to Rivera with a brazen smirk that looks disturbingly like a come-on.


Although the show is produced by the folks at the Fox News Channel (for which Rivera is still a correspondent), the tone is not so much conservative as it is Darwinian. In Rivera's world, it's survival of the fittest, and the fittest are clearly the ones who listen to him. Bad things are out there just waiting to get you, and if you don't shut up and do what Rivera says, then you may end up raped by escaped sex offenders or dead from avian flu, and that won't be the end: Body snatchers may steal your corpse and sell your organs on the black market. Be afraid.


Even watching with a highly critical eye, I found myself getting uneasy about the world as Rivera presents it. Spend a half-hour with him and you'll come to understand that danger is constantly around the next corner, and if you aren't sufficiently upset about it, Rivera will berate you until you are. The world may be a scary place, but Geraldo at Large is a nightmare.

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