Geraldo Rivera doesn't do things in halves. Except, it seems, when it comes to publicly admitting wrongdoing.
Last week, the attention-seeking Fox News pundit came under fire from his peers (and rational-thinking society at large), when he controversially tweeted out that the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's hoodie was as much to blame for his death as the neighborhood watchman who shot him dead.
Perhaps realizing how monumentally offensive, insensitive and plain wrong that was, Rivera is now pulling back the reins of his comments, and offering up a partial apology for his remarks—though not for the reason his detractors may have hoped.
And that's because, despite his apology, Rivera is standing by his message, and saying that while others took his comments as blatant flame-fanning, he saw it more as a public service announcement.
"I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my 'very practical and potentially lifesaving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies,' " he wrote in an email to Politico.com today.
"My own family and friends believe that I have obscured or diverted attention from the principal fact, which is that an unarmed 17-year-old was shot dead by a man who was never seriously investigated by local police. And if that is true, I apologize."
But not, he continued, because he no longer believed in what got him into so much trouble in the first place.
"I remain absolutely convinced of what I said about asking for trouble. There's trouble enough for minority boys and young men not to provoke mad responses from paranoid jerk-offs."
That should simmer everyone down.