RFK Jr.: Hold my bear.

[bigtree]

Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman
Kristi Noem: No one will top my bizarre animal killing stories.

RFK Jr.: Hold my bear.

RFK Jr. admits putting dead bear cub in Central Park 10 years ago

The decade-old question about how a dead six-month-old female black bear cub ended up in New York City's iconic Central Park beneath an old bicycle has been answered. Independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. on Sunday confessed that he was behind the incident after a fact checker from the New Yorker called him to verify the story.

In a video he posted on X, Kennedy said he had come across the bear in the morning when he was going falconing; a woman in a van in front of him hit and killed the bear.

Link to tweet

"So, I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear, and it was in very good condition, and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator," Kennedy said.

But the falconing day went longer than expected, and he had to go straight to a dinner in the city at Peter Luger Steakhouse, he recounted. That, too, ran late, and Kennedy said he realized he had to go to the airport and would not be able to go home to Westchester first.

Kennedy mentioned that in addition to the dead bear cub, he had "an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of."

"I said let's go put the bear in Central Park and we'll make it look like it got hit by a bike," Kennedy recalled. What he did not expect was the media attention the stunt would attract.

read: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rfk-jr-admits-putting-dead-bear-cub-in-central-park-10-years-ago/ar-AA1odZCO?ocid=BingNewsSerp#

A dead bear cub was found in New York City's Central Park in October 2014. / Credit: CBS NY

[hlthe2b]

1. What is it with all these politicians who have zero respect for animal life or animals in general?

Damn. I am constantly picking up the remains of rabbits, squirrels, and birds who fell victim to the raptors in my neighborhood or the occasional coyote and I leave them lightly buried under my "burial bush" on the open space about a block from my house. I just can't leave them there to rot. Whether you think them a great pleasure (as I do) or a nuisance--as do many, I'd like to think we can at least be a bit humane in our response. Much like that scene from "Last of the Mohicans" where they bless the spirit of the elk they have just killed. I just like to think we, as humans, owe them at least that.

Yet these cretin politicos who have no respect for animal life and yet we are to believe they have this intense reverence for the life of the fetus? Give me a break.

[mucifer]

2. I don't understand the cruelty of eating tortured animals from factory farms.

[hlthe2b]

4. I could go on for hours about what should happen in that setting, but we can scarcely get regulations

followed as they are today to address unnecessary cruelty in "processing" and animal husbandry. If we want change, we have to vote--and that includes all age groups regardless of whether they are vegan, vegetarian, dairy only, occasional meat eaters, aggressive "carnivores" or any combination.

[AkFemDem]

3. Do you know how WEIRD you have to be for....

Roseanne to stare at you like you're cuckoo???

[enough]

5. Another psychopath. Trump should have picked him for VP.

[appmanga]

6. An environmental lawyer...

...dumping a dead bear and a trash bicycle in a park? This guy is a couple of bricks short a load. Just how much brain did that worm eat?

[Xavier Breath]

8. More than its fill, apparently.

I'm guessing that at some point it had to finally push itself away from the table and unbuckle its pants.

[EX500rider]

20. I believe the worm starved to death

[RandomNumbers]

21. More than a couple. nt

[Xavier Breath]

7. Weird.

[Lulu KC]

16. Maybe the weirdest yet?

I mean!

[Beatlelvr]

9. This is just too weird

But what got me was...he was going to skin it and eat it!!??? He acted like some scavenger looking for roadkill. Yuck.

[jujubeets]

10. That's hilarious 🤣🤣🤣

The only thing funnier would be had the bear meerly been unconscious, woken up and stolen the bicycle. "And then I swear it stole the bike!" 🤣

[allegorical oracle]

11. Uh..." was going to eat the bear" -- ? Who eats bear meat? nt

[TBF]

12. This guy will do anything for attention. nt

[DET]

13. People Eat Bears?

The thought of skinning a bear makes me nauseaus, but the idea of carving it up is grotesque. I guess that’s hypocritical since we do that with cows, pigs, and chickens. But I never heard of anyone actually eating a bear. Is that a thing somewhere?

[Ms. Toad]

22. My nephew does.

He is a hunter and prides himself on eating everything he kills, including at least one bear. Ironically, when he isn't hunting animals - he's rescuing them, taking pictures of them (because he enjoys them), etc. I don't quite understand what he gets out of hunting, since he obviously has a soft spot for animals. But if one is going to eat meat, I suppose it is kinder to kill the animal quickly, when it is unsuspecting, living its best life in the wild, than as part of factory faming.

And yes, he skinned it and has it stuffed in his house, along with the pelts of other animals - I'm not sure what he does with the excess (since he has more than enough furs in his house), but it's part of using all that he can of what he kills.

[DET]

27. Interesting

I’ve never understood the allure of hunting, but if you’re going to kill something I guess it makes sense to use it to nourish another living creature. Stuffing and displaying it, however, is a bit far for me. Different strokes…

Somewhat off topic, I remember reading a book by or about Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who developed a more humane way to bring cows to slaughter. It was fascinating. I find the older I get, the less I eat meat. I can’t help thinking about the death of the animal.

[Ms. Toad]

28. Stuffing it and displaying it is still part of some sort of respect

for the creature whose life you took. Rather than tossing it in a landfill somewhere, he's getting some enjoyment out of more of the critter than simply eating it.

We have friends who raise all sorts of animals. I'm not sure how they kill them - but I know they focus on honoring their animals and making their lives very pleasant until they are used for food. (I grew up on a family farm - not a factory farm, but still never got used to some of the cruelty that it seemed there ought to be other ways to manage - branding, for example.)

[Zoomie1986]

36. Hunting was how many people stayed alive.

For millennia, pre-agriculture peoples depended on hunting to survive. Even when livestock agriculture became more common, hunting was still necessary for some people to get meat into their diet. I know that serfs in some parts of medieval Europe weren't allowed to eat a vassal's animals, so they hunted to keep from starving.

Well into the 19th century, rural people relied on hunting a great deal. In the modern era, the rural poor tended to be those who hunted for survival. We were one of those families. My grandfather would hunt to put food on the table when we couldn't afford grocery meat. Winter was really tough sometimes, because we couldn't afford veggies, either, and our freezer would start getting low from what we set aside over summer. Meat he acquired from hunting often carried a big share of our calorie load at times like that.

You've had the privilege of having easy and sustainable access to supermarket goods.

Not all of us have.

[Zoomie1986]

35. Don't look too closely at the canned goods

At a grocery store in Asia, particularly Japan. Yes, they can bear meat like we do tuna or deviled ham:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/03/japans-bear-meat-vending-machine-proves-a-surprising-success

Kangaroo meat, too.

https://www.foodmag.com.au/asias-growing-appetite-for-kangaroo/

[Bev54]

14. The story is bad enough but he tells it like Trump telling one of his stories, wandering all over.

He also looks like he is jumpy, like a drug addict jumpy.

[bigtree]

15. the embellishments are really something

...from falconing to late for the meeting to the name of the restaurant.

Some actor should read this on SNL.

[Lulu KC]

17. This one takes the cake

So many kinds of crazy here. You could not pay people to write this.

[bigtree]

18. In this Ohio town, it was a tradition:

New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon 31m
In this Ohio town, it was a tradition: morning mass, biscuits and gravy at Bob Evans, then over to Central Park to dump the body of a dead bear cub. But now the woke mob is taking all of that away.

[Delarage]

19. Someone near a State Park

In Delaware... Brandywine Creek State Park... has a Kennedy sign up. It's a very wealthy area (I drive past President Biden's neighborhood and church on my way there to walk my dog/let her swim). I always wonder just who in the world would support this guy. I'm thinking it's someone super wealthy who probably voted for old school Republicans. So I would imagine he is only taking votes from Republicans. No self respecting Democrat would vote for this nut.

[Clash City Rocker]

23. "Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker..."

Like it requires spin to make this seem strange.

Oh, and yes, that’s Roseanne Barr. She’s practically a spokesperson for “not strange.”

Link to tweet

[Bucky]

24. Did he actually just say "And that was the redneck in me" at 1:25?!

Froggy, the only thing red about you is your secret party affiliation.

[Bucky]

25. It's weird, but let's not make a big deal out of the youthful indiscretions of a mere 60-year-old

He was young and still had a little growing up to do. Maybe he was thinking with the little worm.

[Ocelot II]

26. As long as we're talking about weird....

[RockRaven]

29. Behind The Bastards did a four part series on RFK Jr just this past 2 weeks,

and if you had listened to those episodes, the fact that he had a dead bear cub in his possession -- or that he disposed of it in such a manner -- would surprise you exactly zero percent.

[riverkittenDem]

30. My favorite response so far:

Link to tweet

?t=-NrdWJykemmGWIEA7v2BXw&s=19

[obamanut2012]

31. .....

[canetoad]

32. Nothing speaks to inherent privilege

More than a casual mention of, "going falconing".

[marybourg]

33. And the reporter was Tatiana Schlossberg, Caroline's daughter!

[Beacool]

34. Trump is weird.

RFK Jr.: Hold my beer

He's such a weirdo, and has been so for many years.

[Zoomie1986]

37. I must admit

That I didn't have 'Staging of dead bear under a bike in Central Park' on my 2024 election weirdness bingo card.

The only thing that could be weirder is if the election became boring.

Come to think of it, though, that would be a refreshing change. Maybe we could start a Boring Elections FTW movement.

[rubbersole]

38. I hope the only thing he was going to do to it was skin it and eat it.