Making waves

MARION - Carrying a cup of coffee, French bread, and a change of clothes, Geraldo Rivera debarks from Belle, a 36-foot Hinckley powerboat named for one of his daughters, and pads down the dock in a pair of Uggs.

"I've worn these in Tora Bora and Somalia," he says, admiring the suede slip-ons with the sheepskin lining. "They're so comfortable. I love them."

The dateline this morning is not so exotic, and Rivera is no stranger to the swabs at Barden's Boat Yard. A familiar face just about everywhere, the celebrity newsman with the unmistakable mustache is well known in Marion, where he has spent summers for more than 20 years.

He usually arrives on one of two boats - Rivera's other ride is a 70-foot ketch called Voyager - or in a helicopter that lands on the lawn outside Seagate, the spectacular, 10-bedroom estate he bought several years ago with his fourth wife, C.C. Dyer. (Rivera is married to wife No. 5 now but remains close to Dyer, a Marion native with whom he had two of his five children.)

"Happily, I'm still an honored guest here," he says, checking his BlackBerry while walking the perimeter of the swimming pool overlooking Buzzard's Bay. "If you treat people right, they'll treat you right."

Because Rivera has not always felt well treated, especially by some in the media, he was initially reluctant to meet with a reporter in Marion. He was wary of what he called "another Geraldo hit piece." But in the end he couldn't resist. An entertaining talker and notorious tough guy who once pledged to kill Osama bin Laden and bronze his head, Rivera was happy to play host for a few hours.

"Look, I don't care what people say about me. I've had a wonderful career," he says. "I've been famous for 40 years."

It seems even longer than that. Born Gerald Riviera to a Jewish mother and a Puerto Rican father, Rivera has worked for every major network. He partied with Mick Jagger at Studio 54 in the '70s; virtually invented tabloid TV in the '80s; scored huge cable ratings condemning O.J. Simpson and defending Bill Clinton in the '90s; and walked away from a lucrative contract at NBC to join Fox after Sept. 11.

Along the way, there have been highs (an Emmy for exposing the abuse of mentally retarded patients at Staten Island's Willowbrook State School) and some memorable lows (a talk show segment during which fat from his buttocks was injected into his forehead). But sitting poolside with Henry Hudson, his ex-wife's golden retriever, Rivera says he has just one professional regret: dishing in his 1991 memoir, "Exposing Myself," the details of his extramarital affairs with Bette Midler and Margaret Trudeau.

"It started as a good yarn about a guy who worked his way up to become the first million-dollar reporter," says Rivera. "I should never have written the other stuff. It was self-aggrandizing in a reckless, Romeo kind of way."

A sailor before he was a celebrity, Rivera, who turned 64 in July, is never far from the water. When he's not at this seaside spread between New Bedford and Cape Cod, he lives with his 32-year-old wife, Erica, and their 2-year-old daughter, Sol, in a Kennedy-esque compound in Edgewater, N.J. Most mornings, if he sees the traffic backed up on the George Washington Bridge, Rivera takes his boat to work, docking it at 79th Street and making his way to Fox headquarters in midtown Manhattan.

Raised in a blue-collar section of Long Island, Rivera was introduced to the sea at Fort Schuyler - now the State University of New York Maritime College - where he enrolled at the urging of a high-school principal concerned about the crowd he was running with. He's been boating ever since.

Between 1997 and 2000, Rivera sailed Voyager around the world, and the tales he tells about the experience are predictably swashbuckling. "I've survived a hurricane and been chased by Somalian pirates," he says. "Sailing is laden with so much crap - the tasseled loafers, the swells. I'm not into any of that."

Of course, Marion isn't exactly gritty. The exclusive Kittansett Club is barely a nine iron from his circular driveway, and Rivera's well-heeled neighbors include Goldman Sachs partner Sidney Weinberg, Staples founder Tom Stemberg, and attorney Linda Kenney-Baden and her husband, forensic pathologist Michael Baden. (The couple wasn't around much this summer because they're defending Phil Spector in Los Angeles.)

Immaculate outside, Rivera's gray-shingle summer residence is dark and unfussy inside, stocked with antiques, family photos, and paintings by well-known American artists such as Antonio Jacobsen, Walt Kuhn, William Allen Wall, Stephen Hannock, and C.C. Dyer's sister, Nancy Dyer Mitton. It's ironic perhaps that Rivera paid for the stately neo-Federal mansion with money he made hosting "Geraldo," the trend-setting talk show Newsweek magazine famously labeled "Trash TV."

"Geraldo's always welcome here," says Dyer, just back from a ride on her recumbent bicycle. "Today would have been our 20th wedding anniversary, but we don't celebrate it because I don't think his new wife would like that.

"I'm on one of his biceps," she confides. "He forgot [the anniversary] the first year, so he had to get it tattooed."

Rivera knows what his reputation is - half joking, he refers to himself as "the original rock 'n' roll newsman" - but he can be fierce, too, as he demonstrated during an appearance in April on "The O'Reilly Factor." Discussing a drunken driving death caused by an illegal immigrant, Rivera blew his cool and began berating Bill O'Reilly for making a "cheap political point." The exchange is a YouTube classic.

Says Bill Shine, vice president of programming for Fox: "That's Geraldo. I dare someone to put him on a leash."

Rivera, who as a fledgling lawyer in the '70s counseled the Puerto Rican nationalist group the Young Lords, says he can't stomach the politicians and pundits who are stoking "anti-immigrant hysteria," and his antipathy extends to some of his colleagues at Fox.

"Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I've ever met in my life," he says. "She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.

"It's good she's in D.C. and I'm in New York," Rivera sneers. "I'd spit on her if I saw her."

Whatever people think of Fox and its politics, the host of "Geraldo Rivera at Large" swears he's never been told by network boss Roger Ailes what stories to cover. As for O'Reilly, Rivera says he respects him, even if the two men don't always agree.

"O'Reilly came from the same blue-collar, public-school background that I did. I get him," Rivera says. "And [O'Reilly's] good. There's no such thing as a longtime successful accident."

With that, Rivera, who is due in New York in a few hours for an appearance on "Hannity & Colmes," glances at his watch and then at the water. The night before, he'd taken 19 teenagers from the yacht club in Marion on an overnight trip to Cuddyhunk, and it's clear from the expression on his face that he's in no hurry to go back to work.

"I know these waters intimately, and the sailing's as good here as anywhere on earth," Rivera says, gazing out over the bay. "The ocean's the most nonjudgmental place on earth, and that's what I love about it. If you're bad, you'll get hurt, but if you're good, it's a lot of fun. And I'm good."