Geraldo Rivera: ‘Mustache Is As Responsible for Geraldo Rivera’s Dumb Comments as Geraldo Rivera’

Under fire for comments he made this week that Trayvon Martin’s hoodie was “as responsible” for the teenager’s death as George Zimmerman, “journalist” Geraldo Rivera placed blame for his comments on Geraldo Rivera’s mustache.

“There is no question that the comments Geraldo Rivera made were dumb and insensitive,” said Geraldo Rivera on Fox’s Wake Up, White People. “But there is also no question that those comments would not have been made if Geraldo Rivera did not have a mustache.”

The controversial media personality and world’s worst treasure hunter elaborated. “When you see a journalist with a mustache, what do you think? Things like, ‘Is this Anchorman? Sweet.’ Or perhaps, ‘Am I watching Sabado Gigante?’ Or almost certainly, ‘Is he doing a report on a catastrophic razor blade shortage?’ You think anything other than, ‘I should take this guy seriously.’ And you can be damn sure you’re going to call the police if you see someone like Geraldo Rivera snooping around your garbage, even though I was nowhere near your garbage and that was clearly my clone in those photos.”

After composing himself, he continued. “The bottom line is that someone with a mustache like Geraldo Rivera’s could be explaining quantum physics to you, but you’ll ignore what he’s saying because you’re staring at the lip lamprey above his mouth. That sends a message to the brain that tells it, ‘Hey, you better say something really, really stupid and outrageous, so that people will stop staring at this follicle folly and pay attention to you.’”

“Geraldo,” said Wake Up cohost Blondie Brownshirt, “that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Exactly!” replied Geraldo Rivera, stroking his mustache.

In light of Rivera’s revelation, other mustachioed media members have come forward to confess the heavy, itchy burdens they carry. Television journalist and inventor of a smoke-signal version of Twitter John Stossel said that his mustache is the source of his stupidity.

“Look, no one in their right mind would think it’s a good idea to make a point about the national debt by taking toys from children,” Stossel said. “But when you have a soup strainer like this, everything seems like a good idea by comparison. There’s no idea that looks dumber than walking around like you just got cast for a porn parody of Magnum P.I. called Magnum P. Nis.”

Stossel elaborated that his mustache is so powerfully dumb that it prevents him from growing a gravitas-enhancing beard. “It’s such a fine line between stupid and Blitzer,” he said, “and that line is above my lip.”

Such whisker witlessness is not limited to television journalists. Print journalists can be undone by their facial hair as well. “Oh, there is no question that ‘Ol’ Bushy,’ as I call him, has produced most of my work,” said New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “It practically wrote The World Is Flat.”

Friedman says his mustache generally takes complex issues and offers remarkably dumbed-down solutions. “Every one of my Middle East columns was written by Ol’ Bushy,” Friedman says. “Not surprisingly, all my pro-Iraq war material was mustache-based. And anything about peace between Israel and the Arab world. In fact, I once wrote a column where I suggested that a solution for Jews and Arabs. ‘Hug it out.’ That was the entire column, three words, plus the doodle I had of an Orthodox Jew and a sheik hugging.

“Recently, I wrote that the best way to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without triggering a war was to bombard their facilities with unicorn semen. Even after all these years, Ol’ Bushy can surprise me.”

The trials of the mustachioed journalist does call to mind a solution so simple, perhaps it could be authored by a pundits lip fuzz: Why not shave it off?

“That’s a great question,” Rivera said. “And don’t think I haven’t thought about it, because I haven’t. The answer is this: There are plenty of respectable, clean-shaven, responsible journalists out there. But there is only one Geraldo Rivera, and he gets more attention than 100 CNN anchors put together. Unless you put them together like one of those human centipedes, which, let’s face it, would be the story of the century.” With that, he began calling his scientific sources to ask them about that possibility, twirling his mustache with delight after each denial and angry admonition to never call this number again. "It's all in a day's mustache."