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Geraldo Rivera’s Questionable Reasoning in the Trayvon Martin Case
The much-publicized death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin took an interesting twist when Geraldo Rivera pronounced in an interview on “Fox and Friends” last week that “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin‘s death as much as George Zimmerman was.” Later in the interview Rivera also said “Trayvon Martin, God bless him, an innocent kid, a wonderful kid, a box of Skittles in his hands. He didn’t deserve to die. But I bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way.”
Without commenting on the tragedy of Trayvon’s death or the hoodie movement it has spawned across the country and at institutions like Harvard Law School, we at Blueprint were interested in the outrageous errors in reasoning Rivera’s comments displayed. One of the few bright spots in studying for the LSAT is that, if done correctly, it trains you to spot fallacious reasoning. This comes in handy as a law student, a law practitioner, and, in this case, as a media consumer.
Perhaps the journalism standards for someone who hosted episodes such as “My Ex Hired a Hitman to Kill Me” on The Geraldo Rivera Show that ran in the 90’s should be more lax. Nevertheless, his comments struck us as precisely the sort of erroneous reasoning that an LSAT student should spot a mile away.
So without further ado, we’ve put together a video outlining exactly the logical fallacy Rivera commits.
