Geraldo, Signing Cheek to Cheek
By Lloyd Grove Washington Post Staff Writer

Our old friend Geraldo Rivera is in hot water again.

This time the multimillion-dollar Fox News correspondent is in trouble over a report in yesterday's Free Lance-Star, the Fredericksburg, Va., newspaper, detailing his conduct at the scene of Friday's sniper killing where Kenneth H. Bridges was shot while pumping gas.

Minutes after the 58-year-old Rivera did a grim-faced live stand-up at the Exxon station where Bridges, a Philadelphia father of six, was slain that morning -- calling the sniper a "creep" who had committed "murder and mayhem" from "a cowardly distance" -- he repaired to the local Hooters, 50 yards away, to have dinner and to autograph the skimpy orange hot pants of several willing waitresses.

The 58-year-old television star was joined in this hilarity by producer Craig Rivera -- "my brave brother Craig," as Geraldo called him in a memo last week in which he once again defended himself against the Baltimore Sun's allegations of bad journalism last year when he filed a spectacularly mistaken report of friendly fire in Afghanistan. Hooters patron Geoff Leach, a Fredericksburg environmental consultant, told us that Geraldo and his younger brother each used a felt-tip pen to scrawl their names, left and right, on each cheek of the Hooters shorts. Read more