Geraldo Rivera - My own son ashamed of me

By MJ LEE | 3/23/12 1:51 PM EDT 

Geraldo Rivera’s son Gabriel is “ashamed” of his controversial comments about Trayvon Martin and his hoodie from earlier in the day, the Fox News host admitted to POLITICO.

“Gabriel broke my heart. He’s my oldest, 32, and he just told me that for the first time in his life he’s ashamed of what I wrote on [Fox News Latino],” Rivera said in an email.

Rivera touched off a media firestorm when he said on “Fox & Friends” and his blog that Martin – who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain last month – wouldn’t have been attacked if he hadn’t been sporting a hoodie.

“I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies,” the Fox News host said. “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”

In his long monologue on the air, Rivera had mentioned his other son, 24-year-old Cruz. “When you see a kid walking down the street, particularly a dark-skinned kid like my son Cruz, who I constantly yelled at when he was going out wearing a damn hoodie or those pants around his ankles,” he said, before penning an article that appeared on the Fox News Latino website soon after.

In his email to POLITICO, Rivera said that he tried his best to convey to Gabriel where he was coming from.

“I wrote him, and I’m telling you that my mission is to save kids’ lives in the real world,” the Fox News host said.

“We can bluster and posture all day long about the injustice of it all, but despite what Roland Martin or even my son Gabriel Miguel Rivera says, every hoodie should come with a warning like cigarettes, ‘caution wearing this could get you killed.’”

But Gabriel didn’t respond well to his father’s explanation.

“Gabriel wrote back to say I’ve gone viral for all the wrong reasons,” Rivera wrote in another email, with an unhappy face icon at the end of the sentence.

But even despite his son’s anger (Cruz, unlike his older brother, isn’t mad at him about the comments, Rivera said), the TV and radio personality said he has no intention of taking back what he said. “No I don’t retract a word of it because I’m concerned with saving kids lives,” he said.