Geraldo Riveraâs âPlaygirlâ Issue Canceled
Following the negative response to a racy photo of Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera, women's pornographic magazine Playgirl has canceled an upcoming issue that would have prominently featured him in the nude. The 70-year-old Rivera surprised (and shocked) his Twitter followers early Sunday after he tweeted a shirtless picture of himself in a bathroom, wearing nothing but rose-shaded glasses and covered by a carefully placed towel. "70 is the new 50," Rivera wrote. "(Wife) Erica and family are going to be so pissed...but at my age..." But following a barrage of mockery on Twitter and in the news media, Rivera deleted the image. Playgirl then issued a statement in response saying it has decided to pull the upcoming issue, which included Rivera on the cover and in a six-page nude pictorial spread. In a phone interview, Rivera said he tweeted the photo in an attempt to drum up publicity for his upcoming appearance on the cover of Playgirl, in which he bares "everything, leaving nothing to the imagination" in a series of nude photos, which were taken on Long Island, N.Y., last month that included images of him in a bathtub, on a farm riding horses and on a sandy beach. Rivera added he was disappointed that the magazine will not be released in light of the Twitter and media response. "I thought it would be fun to do Playgirl, especially at 70 years old," Rivera said. "I figured, 'Better late than never.' I've even got the sexy mustache and the suave Latino charm. "I hadn't even told my wife or my family about doing the magazine, so that's why I wrote (in the caption) that they are going to be pissed," he added. "I haven't even told anyone at Fox News. So I thought I'd give them and all of my followers a nice sneak peak and let them know what they could expect. "I thought at the very least all the elderly people who watch Fox News would be excited about me being in Playgirl. It's just too bad no one else seemed to think so." Playgirl's Managing Editor Kelly Kapowski confirmed that Rivera was going to be in the magazine as the first in a new feature highlighting sexy men aged 50 or older who would appear completely nude just like the magazine's younger models. "We had planned to start a regular feature in our magazine featuring older men in the nude as a way to broaden our appeal to older female readers," Kapowski said. "Mr. Rivera was the first man to agree to our offer. "We also planned to feature (actors) Viggo Mortensen, John Corbett, John Slattery and Mark Harmon, who had agreed to do it," Kapowski said. "But after the negative response to Geraldo, I decided it wasn't worth the risk of losing readers and canceled it. "Now, it looks like we are going to stick to nude photos of 20-something gay men."